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HEEBEET SPENCEE 




HERBERT SPENCER. 



PIONEERS IN EDUCATION 

HERBERT SPENCER 

AND SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION 

BY 

GABRIEL COMPAYRE 

CORRESPONDENT OP THE INSTITUTE J DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMY 

OF LYONS; AUTHOR OF "PSYCHOLOGY APPLIED TO 

EDUCATION," "LECTURES ON PEDAGOGY," 

"A HISTORY OF PEDAGOGY," ETC. 



TKANSLATED BY 
MARIA E. FINDLAY 



NEW YORK 

THOMAS Y. CRO WELL & CO. 

PUBLISHERS 



IL.attARYot CONGRESS j 
Two Copies Received 
OCT 1 190? 
Cooyrntrt Entry 

Vas&A XX^Trio- 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 190T, 
Bt THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY. 



Published, September, 1907. 



CONTENTS AND SUMMAET 

PAGE 

Preface vii 

I. The question whether it is necessary to be a professional 

to write on education. — Mr. Herbert Spencer merely 
a theorist. — Success of his book, especially in France. 

— Place of education in the doctrine of evolution. — 
The System of Synthetic Philosophy. — Spencer's life. — 
A half-century of hard work. — Crises of illness. — 
Germs of his future vocation. — Family influences. — 
Precocious taste for natural history. — Predilection 
for moral questions. — Spencer's mode of thought. — 
Extraordinary extent of his information. — Tendency 
to generalize. — Opinions of Darwin and Stuart Mill. — 
Scientific inspiration of the essay on Education. — 
Brilliant qualities of style 1 

II. Supremacy of the sciences in education. — The story 
of Cendrillon. — The quarrel between the ancients and 
the moderns. — Lamartine and Arago. — Hamilton 
and Whewell. — Perfection is of this world. — The per- 
fect life. — Education a preparation for the perfect life. 

— The "full" man. — Classification of the essential 
forms of activity. — Preservation of one's person and 
health. — Acquisition of material things. — Duties of 
the head of a family. — Duties of the citizen. — JEs- 
thetic activity. — How the various sciences are neces- 
sary to direct the various functions of life. — Educa- 
tion of mankind forgotten. — The physical sins. — 
Professional instruction. — Objections and criticisms. 

— Modern education an education of celibates. — 

iii 



iv CONTENTS AND SUMMARY 

PAGE 

Criticism of teaching of history. — Descriptive soci- 
ology. — Literature and the fine arts relegated to the 
last place. — The poet should be a man of learning. — 
Is science "educative" rather than "instructive"? — 
Training of the memory. — Dangers of every exclusive 
study. — All-round education, or education purely 
scientific. — Mr. Spencer's hesitations . . .19 

III. Intellectual education. — Relationship between social 
states and systems of education. — Tendency to prefer 
the pleasurable to the useful. — Criticism of the study 
of living and of dead languages. — New tendencies. — 
Return to nature. — Science and nature. — Leading 
principles of intellectual education. — Passage from 
the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the ab- 
stract, etc. — The development of the race and the de- 
velopment of the individual. — Spontaneous activity. 
— Attractive instruction. — Application of these prin- 
ciples. — Object lessons. — Drawing. — Early educa- 
tion 51 

IV. Physical education. — Position of honour accorded it 
in England. — Parents there, however, devote more 
care to the bringing up of animals than to the educa- 
tion of children. — Feeding. — It is necessary to be 
well nourished. — Practices regarding food. — Sweet- 
meats. — Fruits. — Question of clothing. — Caprices 
of fashion. — Physical exercises. — How they have 
been wrongfully neglected in the education of girls. — 
Superiority of the free games over gymnastic exer- 
cises. — Mental overstrain. — Physical overstrain. — 
Football condemned. — Mr. Spencer's criticisms of 
American customs. — Muscular strength assigned its 
proper place. — Campaign against militarism. — Ne- 
cessity of maintaining an equilibrium between the 
faculties 67 



CONTENTS AND SUMMARY v 

PAGE 

V. Moral education. — Mr. Spencer does not believe in the 

efficacy of science to moralize mankind. — Outline of 
his moral system. — Utilitarian morality. — Happiness 
the ultimate aim of life. — Moral progress a necessity. 

— Altruistic tendencies are becoming little by little as 
powerful as the egoistic. — Moral intuitions. — Does 
the moral sense, a product by means of heredity of the 
"experiences of utility " consolidated from age to age, 
deliver a lesson on useless morality ? — Why we do not 
admit this, especially if morality consists particularly 
in seeking happiness. — Wavering of Mr. Spencer over 
the question of the goodness or the badness of children's 
instincts. — Moral discipline. — The natural reactions. 

— Criticism of this system. — The natural reactions are 
not always efficacious, neither soft nor just. — They are 
sometimes tardy. — Necessity for the intervention of 
parents or masters in discipline 86 

VI. Wherein Mr. Spencer's essay is chiefly found wanting. — 
A certain lack of originality. — Inspiration of Rousseau 
always present. — Especial stress placed on ideas already 
known. — The personal accent in the essay on Educa- 
tion. — Philosophical spirit. — Psychology and peda- 
gogy. — The philosophical spirit calls for the spirit of 
freedom. — Mr. Spencer is a liberal and an individualist. 

— His opinion concerning Socialism. — The equality of 
the sexes. — Why women should be given the same 
liberty as men. — Why they should not, however, par- 
ticipate in political rights. — Spirit of gentleness and 
humanity. — Inhuman hardness, nevertheless, toward 
the unfortunate in life. — War on asceticism. — Kindly 
morality. — Religious spirit. — A mysterious univer- 
sal and incomprehensible Power. — The religion of 
hate and the religion of love 107 

Bibliography 119 



PEEFACE 

In publishing a series of monographs on the 
"Pioneers in Education/' those of all nations and 
of every age, we have several aims in view. 

In the first place, we wish to represent the men 
who deserve to have their names on the honour 
list in the history of education, all who have in 
any remarkable way contributed to the reform and 
progress of the instruction and advancement of 
humanity; to represent them as they lived; to 
show what they thought and did ; and to exhibit 
their doctrine and methods, and their moral 
character. 

But after having portrayed each heroic figure 
clearly, we must also sketch his background ; the 
general tendencies of the epoch in which the re- 
former lived, the scholastic institutions of his coun- 
try, and the genius, so to speak, of his race, in 
order that we may set forth in successive pictures 
the struggles and the progress of the civilized races. 

In the last place, we wish to do more than write 

a historical narrative merely. Our ambition is 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

higher : it is to bring face to face ideas held long 
ago with modern opinions, with the needs and 
aspirations of society to-day, and thus to prepare 
the way for a solution of the pedagogical problems 
confronting the twentieth century. 

In this series of monographs we have placed 
Herbert Spencer directly after J.-J. Rousseau, be- 
cause it is useful to give prominence to the very 
close descent of doctrine in what concerns education 
from the immortal philosopher of the eighteenth 
century, to the illustrious sociologist of our own 
time, who in the calm of his old age sees his fame 
still extending. 

We are acquainted with no more genuine disciple 
of the author of Emile than the writer of the 
charming essay on Education. They, doubtless, 
differ profoundly in their general views regarding 
mankind and the universe. 

Rousseau had not even a glimpse of the great 
law which is the keystone of the system of Mr. 
Herbert Spencer, the law of Evolution. The notion 
of progress without denned limit is quite foreign to 
the former ; and with his impassive Providence, his 
superstitious worship for a "Nature" created, it 
would seem, perfect at a stroke, Rousseau to-day 
may appear somewhat behind the times when com- 
pared with the evolutionist philosopher, who con- 



PREFACE ix 

ceives the life of the universe as a perpetual advance 
towards a perfection belonging to the future. But 
none the less they have sought in Nature, differently 
understood, but respected, and proclaimed supreme 
guide in education by both alike, the principle under- 
lying every reform in education. Many pages of 
this great book on Education, — the substance 
of which we shall try to give in a very brief 
analysis — are little but a full and clear exposition 
and enlargement, an orchestral setting, as it were, 
of themes borrowed from Emile. The whole book 
is full of the inspiration of Rousseau, despite the 
fact that he is never mentioned in it. Mr. Spencer, 
in order to jealously guard his positivism from that 
of French origin, wrote a pamphlet entitled Reasons 
for dissenting from M. Comte ; he might as well 
have composed another, entitled, Reasons for accord- 
ing with Rousseau. 

We dedicate this study, and those which follow 
it, to all people who are interested in the cause of 
education, and who think, as we do, that this ques- 
tion is the vital one, the one upon which depends the 
future of the race ; without which no social reform 
is possible ; that finally, the progress of education 
is the question of life and death for society and the 
individual alike. 



HERBERT SPENCER 



It is a question to what extent a writer, in order 
to compose a good book on education, should qual- 
ify himself professionally, and acquire professional 
skill in the art of teaching. Rousseau's example 
has shown that, however valuable may be personal 
practice and experience, a philosopher can compose 
an excellent treatise on how to train up a child with- 
out them. In order to define the great laws of in- 
struction and education, it is not absolutely indis- 
pensable to have been a schoolmaster and taught 
a class. Montaigne, Fenelon, Locke, — not to men- 
tion others, — have given proof of being wise edu- 
cators without having a claim to the title profes- 
sionally. We might even venture to maintain that 
there are certain advantages to a writer on pedagogy 
in approaching the subject with a mind, so to speak, 
free, unprejudiced, and innocent of any " esprit de 
corps"; hampered neither by long-worn chains of 
tradition, nor by the idols of the schoolmaster, who, 
in short, is not by force of habit inclined to revere 

as articles of faith and unassailable truths those 

1 



2 HERBERT SPENCER 

methods and processes to which he has become at- 
tached himself by a long and close fidelity. It de- 
mands a certain amount of heroism in a professor or 
a " Schoolman " to reject a system of studies in sup- 
port of which he has spent his strength and employed 
his life. Moreover, the workman's attention is 
absorbed in the details and technicalities of practice ; 
he is buried, like "the good Rollin," in the difficulties 
of application; he has neither the leisure, nor at all 
times the mental power necessary to grapple with 
the great questions underlying the subject. It is 
true that he sees things more exactly, for he studies 
them from a nearer position; but the theorist, pro- 
vided he is in the least a philosopher, looks at them 
from a higher point of view, and though he may be 
in danger of straying amongst erroneous concep- 
tions, ideas not controlled and verified by experience, 
still he is in a better position for laying hold of gen- 
eral truths, — those which escape the more limited 
vision of the practical teacher. 

Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, like Rousseau, is merely 
a thinker and theorist, shows in his well-known essay 
on Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, 1 

1 Education, Intellectual, Moral, and Physical, is not, properly- 
speaking, a book. It is a collection of papers the author put to- 
gether in 1861 for issue in one volume. The first chapter, What 
Knowledge is of Most Worth, had appeared in 1859 in the Westminster 
Review; the second and oldest, Intellectual Education, in the North 



HERBERT SPENCER 3 

that the reflective power of a strong and profound 
mind, a mind which has examined all the problems of 
the physical and moral world, may to some extent 
supply a lack of professional experience. Certainly 
we shall have to make important reservations, and 
whatever may be our admiration for this ingenious 
and seductive work of Mr. Herbert Spencer, we shall 
not spare criticisms. 1 But his ideas, even those 
which are most positive and most closely systema- 
tized, — and these, perhaps, most of all, — deserve 
to be known, and we willingly subscribe to the judg- 
ment of a distinguished American teacher, W. H. 
Payne, now Professor in the University of Michigan, 
who wrote, in 1886: "The most useful and profound 
book which has been written on education since 
the Emile of J.-J. Rousseau is certainly Herbert 
Spencer's essay." 

British Review, in 1854; the third and fourth, Moral Educa- 
tion, Physical Education, in 1858 and 1859, in the British Quarterly 
Review. The author acknowledges that, as regards composition, 
the book is not ideal; but "the four together form a relatively- 
acceptable volume." 

1 That is to say, we could in no way unite in the opinions on the 
one hand too favourable, and on the other, too adverse, either for 
or against, which two French philosophers, Bertrand and Thamin, 
have expressed on Herbert Spencer. The former says, in the Pref- 
ace to his translation, that it is not worth while to discuss in de- 
tail "theories which may be accepted almost without reserve." 
The second, that Mr. Spencer's book is "worthless and inconsist- 
ent." {Education and Positivism, p. 106.) 



4 HERBERT SPENCER 

In the stupendous total of scientific work to which 
Spencer devoted his life and consecrated half a 
century of toil, this little book on education seems 
at first view but a slight thing. What are these 
couple of hundred pages, in which he lays down in 
summary fashion the essential principles of intellec- 
tual education and of moral discipline, in comparison 
with the many thousand pages in which the same 
writer has set before us a system of the universe 
and explained and defined all the forms of nature : 
how they had their beginning, their growth, and their 
evolution, not omitting to prophesy their future and 
their final dissolution ? It is like a little island lost 
in an immense ocean of ideas. I should not be at 
all surprised if Mr. Spencer himself considered this 
rather hastily written early work — it dates back 
almost to his youth — as a relatively negligible 
quantity. It cuts a small figure by the side of the 
ten big volumes in which the English positivist, 
leaving far behind him the six volumes of the 
Course of Positivist Philosophy of Auguste Comte, 
successively formulated the First Principles, the 
Principles of Biology, Principles of Psychology, Prin- 
ciples of Sociology, and finally, Principles of Morality, 
having thus entered upon the most stupendous in- 
vestigation into the universality of phenomena ever 
attempted and carried out by human intellect. 



HERBERT SPENCER 5 

Nevertheless, out of all that Spencer thought and 
wrote, this short sketch of a theory of rational edu- 
cation has contributed the most, at least in foreign 
lands, to render his name well known and illustrious. 
Its success has been remarkable in every country, and 
especially in France, where several translations have 
run into ten editions : the first was published in 1878, 
when a reform of our scholastic institutions was 
just beginning. Of all the author's works it is, 
perhaps, this which has the greatest chance of sur- 
viving, for philosophical hypotheses are frequently 
very short-lived, and in the shipwreck of systems 
which a philosopher has with very great labour 
built up, it is sometimes only a few grains of familiar 
truth and good sense scattered negligently with 
prodigal hand, which mount to the surface and are 
collected as a precious, sacred relic by posterity. 

Yet, let us not make the mistake of thinking that 
the composition of Education was a mere accident 
in Spencer's scientific career, — the passing relaxa- 
tion of a few leisure hours. An evidence that he 
felt the paramount importance of his subject is the 
fact that he very frequently returned to it during 
the course of his publications. 

Is it not, moreover, evident that a psychologist 
and sociologist such as Herbert Spencer, who was 
far from being a mere speculative scientist, inclined 



6 HERBERT SPENCER 

to shut himself up with egoistic indifference in his 
ivory tower; who, on the contrary, probed the 
secrets of nature with an intense ardour, solely to 
derive therefrom practical results; who desired to 
understand mankind fully, only that he might con- 
tribute to their happiness; could such a man fail 
to interest himself in the solution of a question partly 
involving the future of individuals and of societies? 
Though nature appeared to him a result of the inex- 
orable laws of evolution, the work of " a benevolent 
necessity," to use his expression, yet he did not the 
less understand that education, that is to say, human 
effort, — a double mode of effort, since it demands 
activity from both master and pupil at the same 
time, — has its place to claim within the narrow, 
determinist system of nature; that humanity, hav- 
ing been conducted along the necessary path of de- 
velopment by the unconscious will of heredity and 
evolution, has yet an obligation, and this presup- 
poses the power to govern and train itself, in order 
that it may help in the progressive upward move- 
ment ; that, in brief, nature could not do without the 
aid of human will entirely, will that is better en- 
lightened regarding the end to be reached and the 
means to be employed. Hence this essay on Educa- 
tion appears to us like homage paid willingly or un- 
willingly by the philosopher of evolution and its 



HERBERT SPENCER 7 

necessary laws — possibly at the cost of a contra- 
diction — to the power of human liberty. 

This is not the place to expound, even in briefest 
form, the System of Synthetic Philosophy. F. How- 
ard Collins, a disciple of Spencer, merely to make 
an abstract of it, has written a volume of six hundred 
pages. Every system of pedagogy doubtless implies 
a philosophy; and we shall have occasion during 
the course of our task to indicate how Mr. Spencer's 
pedagogical notions are connected with his general 
conceptions, with the theory of evolution as under- 
stood by him, with his ethics and sociology. Let 
us note, however, now, that his essay on Education 
dates from a period when he was still groping after, 
and marking out, the great lines of his system, the 
elaboration of which did not actually begin until 
about 1854. The first volume of his Synthetic 
Philosophy appeared only some years later, in 
1866. To profit by his reflections on the educative 
influence of science, the effectiveness of object les- 
sons, the discipline of natural reactions, it is in no 
way necessary to have made oneself familiar with 
the technical terminology appropriate to his philo- 
sophical arguments. Neither " differentiation," nor 
" integration," " segregation," or " equilibration " 
are matters of importance here. Nothing reminds 
the reader of the luminous pages of Education, of 



8 HERBERT SPENCER 

the complicated formulae, deliberately rendered 
obscure to the uninitiated, which form the conclusion 
to the First Principles; for example, this passage: 
"Life is a definite combination of heterogeneous 
changes, at once simultaneous and successive, cor- 
responding with coexistences and external se- 
quences;" or again: " Evolution is an integration 
of matter accompanied by dissipation of movement, 
during which matter passes from indefinite, inco- 
herent homogeneity, to definite, coherent homo- 
geneity." When, at the beginning of his long career, 
Mr. Spencer let himself for a while be drawn aside 
from his purely scientific researches, to write an 
essay which, considered from the point of view of 
school studies, may be called the apotheosis of sci- 
ence, he desired to be understood of every one ; and 
this book, not a fragment of his system, and on many 
points quite independent of it, is distinguished by 
clearness of ideas, not less than by lucidity of style 
and vigorous ease of argument. 

But if there is no reason for initiating our readers 
into the details of Mr. Spencer's speculations, — a 
task which for the rest would be impossible, — 
it may not be useless, before entering upon an 
examination of his pedagogical work, to make 
acquaintance with the workman, with the general 
tendencies of his mind. In that way we shall 



HERBERT SPENCER 9 

understand how he was led to take up the question 
of education, and under what kind of inspiration he 
expounded it. 

His long life, entirely devoted to study, can be 
briefly described. It was the unbroken life of a 
scholar, altogether occupied in writing and thinking. 
He never allowed himself to be turned aside from 
what he considered his mission in the world by any 
kind of distraction, whether of occupation or trouble. 
He did not even consent to accept academic honours ; 
for example, he refused the title of correspondent 
of the Institute of France, which was offered to him 
a few years ago by the " Academy of Moral and 
Political Science." The only events, or almost the 
only ones, which broke the monotony of his indus- 
trious life were the successive publication of the 
different volumes composing the monument raised 
by Mr. Spencer to science and philosophy. Unfor- 
tunately, also, serious attacks of illness rather de- 
layed or entirely interrupted mental application 
several times ; his brain suffered a kind of paralysis 
through overstrain. This malady first attacked him 
in 1855, when he was still a young man, — he was 
born in 1820, — and after a complete rest of eighteen 
months he could work only three hours a day. He 
had his hours of discouragement, and he bore some 
reverses; thus he acknowledges that he published 



10 HERBERT SPENCER 

books " which did not return what they cost/' and 
he gathered "more fame than money." 

How often, when completely laid up through 
nervous exhaustion, especially during the years 1886 
to 1890, did he despair of ever finishing his colossal 
undertaking, a task completed only in 1896. ... At 
that time, an invalid seventy-six years of age, a cry 
of satisfaction escaped him when he published his 
last volume. "My chief feeling about it," he said, "is 
that of being set free, liberated from my task. ..." 
He who protested so often and so eloquently against 
overloading and overstraining the brain was him- 
self a most conspicuous victim of this evil. He was 
one of several men of genius who have proved that 
physical weakness is no bar to intellectual strength. 
His illustrious fellow-countryman, Charles Darwin, 
the author of The Origin of Species, furnishes 
another example; Darwin's son tells us that "one 
of the chief features of his father's life was that for 
nearly forty years he never knew one day of the 
health of ordinary men." It might be said of both 
Spencer and Darwin that the life of these great 
toilers "was one long combat with fatigue and 
illness." 

Spencer was not a man to expose himself to the 
public gaze. Like a philosopher, he remained hid- 
den, whereas Rousseau published his life abroad, 



HERBERT SPENCER 11 

not withholding even the details that are most 
personal and least fit for confession. We know 
little about Herbert Spencer's youth. He has not 
recounted, like John Stuart Mill, the course of his 
early education and the growth of his intellectual 
power. He has, however, told us enough to enable 
us to discover in the movements of his mind during 
youth the germs of his future vocation. He has 
spoken of his ardent devotion then to scientific re- 
search, and his inclination for the study of moral 
and social questions. Stimulus in this direction 
was present also in his own family. One of his 
uncles, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, a minister, 
appears to have been a philanthropist and friend 
of the poor, and to have taken an active and leading 
part in providing for the well-being of his fellow- 
citizens; in the village in which he lived for forty 
years as minister he established a school, a public 
library, and a clothing society. Nothing is lost in 
this world, and the example of the older generation 
suggests ideas and deeds to the younger generation. 
On the other hand, it is doubtless from his father 
that Herbert Spencer inherited his taste for obser- 
vation and love of natural science. His father, a 
teacher in a humble position in the little town of 
Derby, was appointed in 1814 (six years before the 
birth of his son) secretary to a society of lovers of 



12 HERBERT SPENCER 

natural science organized by Erasmus Darwin, 
the grandfather of the naturalist. He studied spe- 
cially entomology, and the little Herbert, still quite 
a child, made, in obedience to his father's directions, 
small collections of insects from the neighbouring 
fields; in years to come he will collect in the same 
way, searching every corner and recess of the globe, 
an infinite mass of facts, — facts from experience and 
from records. "Whoever," he writes, "has not 
when a child collected insects and plants, knows 
nothing of the poetry shining over the fields and 
roadside hedges. ..." 

We must note that when Spencer first ventured 
before the public, he took up moral and political 
questions, and that these he never forsook. His 
first work, published in 1842, was an essay entitled, 
The Proper Sphere of Government; he already as- 
serted in it the principle of progress, and although 
he published Social Statistics in 1850, he completed 
and crowned his system with his Principles of Moral- 
ity. 1 He considered this part of his theory of es- 
pecial importance. . . . "There is urgent need," 

1 The last chapters of Principles of Morality appeared in 1892 
and 1896. But already, in 1879, fearing that health might perma- 
nently fail, even if life did not end before reaching the last part 
of the task, Spencer had published the first part of the volume 
under the title, The Basis of Evolutionary Ethics, interrupting thus 
the proposed order of his publications, seeing that the second or 



HERBERT SPENCER 13 

he said, "of establishing the laws of right conduct 
on scientific principles." 

Such a profound moralist could not help becoming 
an educationist; and, moreover, in his intense pur- 
suit of his goal, a goal encyclopaedic in character, he 
touched on every subject. If we read only his three 
volumes of Political and Scientific Essays, 1 in which 
we pass from an article on "The Constitution of 
the Sun," or on the "Nebular Hypothesis," to 
dissertations quite as learned on the "Philosophy 
of Style," the "Origin and Function of Music," 
or, it may be on the "Ways and Proceedings of 
Railway Administration," we recognize that he is 
interested in every subject: education, then, could 
not be a matter of indifference to him. 

Indeed, the chief characteristic of Mr. Spencer's 
intellectual activity is the extraordinary extent of 
his information about all subjects. Look at the 
list of what he calls his "references" at the end of 
one of the volumes of his Synthetic Philosophy, at the 
catalogue of authors whom he cites as authorities 
for the content of any one of his books, and you will 
learn the boundless variety of his reading. Is there 
any subject of which he is ignorant ? Any authority 

third parts of the Principles of Sociology, which logically should 
have preceded the Ethics, did not appear until after 1880. 

1 The Essays were translated into French by A. Burdeau in 1879. 



14 HERBERT SPENCER 

whom he has not consulted? He quotes Aristotle 
and criticises Kant, but he is no whit less acquainted 
with the customs and superstitions of the natives 
of Oceania. He began life as a civil engineer, em- 
ployed by a railway company ; his genius for inves- 
tigation quickly drew him away from this subordi- 
nate position; and his keen and eager intellect be- 
came enriched with all the wealth of modern science. 
He has studied the moral and religious beliefs of 
mankind as much as the physical law of gravitation, 
and observed the customs and costumes of many 
nations with the same care as the movements of the 
stars. He knew the Esquimaux and Papuans as 
well as he knows the ancient Greeks and Romans. 
He is acquainted with what is happening amongst the 
Fijians, and also with how they feed children in 
Paris and its suburbs ; yet he could supply informa- 
tion to our poet and dramatist, M. Brieux, author 
of the Remplacantes. . . . Englishmen, thanks to 
their great colonies and their commercial relations 
with all parts of the world, are exceptionally well 
placed for studying human beings. Philosophers 
push their observations to every land to which the 
political influence or industrial expansion of Eng- 
land has extended. Hence Mr. Spencer has been 
able to satisfy his thirst for knowledge, and as 
preparation for his psychological and moral theories 



HERBERT SPENCER 15 

he has laid under contribution all the civilized na- 
tions and savage peoples of the universe. 

The objection might, indeed, be raised that Mr. 
Spencer has gathered with full hands observations 
made by other people, rather than made them him- 
self. That is what Darwin gently insinuated in 
spite of the deep admiration he professed to feel 
for Mr. Spencer, when he wrote in 1866: "Were 
Mr. Spencer to make more observations himself, 
even at the risk of losing some of his power of re- 
flection, — according to the law of balance and com- 
pensation, — he would be a marvellous man. . . ." 

It is precisely this " power of reflection, " this 
constructive power, which is Mr. Spencer's second 
distinctive feature. This collector of facts is also 
a reasoner, an inductive thinker. A tendency to 
generalize, a genius for synthesis, inspires and urges 
him on. No thinker surpasses him in the power of 
linking and coordinating ideas, and zeal for logical 
system. In this direction he is, indeed, the Auguste 
Comte of England, though he has always declined 
to acknowledge himself a follower of the French 
leader of Positivism; and, in a sharp defence of his 
incontestable claims to originality, he has marked 
his disagreement in bold relief in the pamphlet en- 
titled, Reasons for dissenting from M. Comte. In this 
also he has merited the title of a " Spinoza in Posi- 



16 HERBERT SPENCER 

tivism." He does not object to be called "Posi- 
tivist " ; and a Spinoza he is in the sense that he also 
has tried to construct a system of the universe by 
deductions almost as rigorous as the geometrical 
demonstrations of the author of The Ethics. 

That Mr. Spencer and his bold speculations have 
not escaped criticism, opposition, and, most of all, 
indifference, in his own country, is not a matter for 
surprise. The English intellect, different from the 
German, tends to be timid in facing speculative 
theories; it prefers exact observations to hazardous 
hypotheses, cautious and limited inductions. Mr. 
Spencer has not lacked admirers, and these from 
amongst the greatest men of his time. Darwin 
was outspoken in expressions of sympathy. An 
elective affinity, moreover, could not fail to unite 
the naturalist who constructed, through observation 
of variations among species, the theory of natural 
selection and of the evolution of the race, with the 
philosopher who by bold generalizations aimed at 
explaining and interpreting all phenomena "in the 
order of evolution." When Darwin, in 1859, published 
his Origin of Species, he could not have found a reader 
better prepared to understand and appreciate it 
than Herbert Spencer. Several times Mr. Spencer 
had written to congratulate him on his " admirable" 
labours. From the year 1852 the two evolutionists 



HERBERT SPENCER 17 

were associated in a scientific friendship (as Renan 
and Berthelot in France), and this never changed. 
"I presume/' Darwin said, in 1870, "that later Mr. 
Spencer will be considered by far the greatest phi- 
losopher of the present century, if, indeed, he is not 
held equal to the greatest of the philosophers of the 
past ages." J. S. Mill also rendered him no slight 
measure of homage in his book on Auguste Comte : 
"Mr. Spencer is one of the most profound thinkers 
yet sprung from English philosophy, a man imbued 
with a truly scientific spirit." We shall find this 
"truly scientific spirit" the inspirer of the scheme 
of education outlined by Mr. Spencer. 

Moreover, to all his other gifts the author adds 
an excellent style, a feature which has certainly 
contributed to the success of this book. If the 
course of studies proposed by him in a spirit of scien- 
tific exclusiveness is such as would hinder the ac- 
quisition of literary power amongst students adopt- 
ing it, Mr. Spencer is far from despising literary 
qualities himself. The art of exposition and of 
setting forth abstract ideas in order, clearly, fully, 
and easily, has never been carried to a higher point 
by any philosopher. Ingenious comparisons, brill- 
iant similes and figures of speech brighten the heavy 
mass of solid thought. The weighty erudition of the 
scientist does not suppress the sallies of a humorous 



18 HERBERT SPENCER 

talker. He likes to relieve the monotony of a disserta- 
tion by popular expressions. He tells us what Hodge 
and Giles said, " after comparing notes over their 
respective pigsties." He listens to the conversation 
of farmers seated around the table of a village inn 
after church service on Sunday. And yet a careful 
method dominates the order in which his brilliant 
and varied ideas are set forth. It might be said 
that the writer was giving loose rein to the eager 
flight of his thought and fancy. Not so; he is on 
guard, and quite their master. At the end of each 
fully developed notion he reviews and condenses 
the essential points in simple and forcible phrases. 
If at times he repeats himself, that is because he 
is seeking twenty different ways, each interesting, 
of kindling the imagination of his readers. In short, 
this book on Education shows no trace of the heavi- 
ness characteristic of didactic treatises; it has all 
the charm of an agreeable conversation, lively wit, 
and what one writer has even called " rough good 
humour." Mr. Spencer is one of the fortunate 
writers who, after spending years with the patience 
of a Benedictine friar in preparing enormous learned 
compendiums, can yet wield, as if for sport, a facile 
pen in the composition of sparkling articles for re- 
views. 



II 

One can quickly gain an insight into Mr. Spencer's 
intentions concerning education by quoting a pas- 
sage in which he uses the Cinderella fairy story to 
describe the approaching discomfiture of literary 
studies and the decisive victory of science. " Para- 
phrasing an Eastern fable, we may say that in the 
household of knowledges science is the household 
drudge, who in obscurity hides unrecognized per- 
fections. To her has been committed all the work; 
by her skill, intelligence, and devotion have all con- 
veniences and gratifications been obtained ; and while 
ceaselessly ministering to the rest, she has been kept 
in the background, that her haughty sisters might 
flaunt their fripperies in the eyes of the world. The 
parallel holds yet further. For we are fast coming to 
the denouement, when the positions will be changed ; 
and while these haughty sisters sink into merited 
neglect, Science, proclaimed as highest in worth 
and beauty, will reign supreme/ ' Nothing could 
be more clearly stated: literature will decline and 
fall, even the merit of contributing its share to the 

19 



20 HERBERT SPENCER 

pleasures of life would seem to be denied ; science — 
henceforth ruling the school as it now rules the world 
— is to triumph as supreme sovereign. In the an- 
cient quarrel of humanism versus realism, Mr. Spen- 
cer took sides decisively. He did not hesitate in 
the least between the claims of rival specialists 
who are constantly renewing the scene in the 
Bourgeois Gentilhomme, where a teacher of philoso- 
phy and a teacher of dancing each demands the first 
place for his own subject, and wrangle over the 
control of the curriculum. To the all-important 
question, "What knowledge is of most worth?" 
he makes the reply, "Science, science as a whole, 
every science." * 

This strife is not new. It has burst forth several 
times and aroused passionate reprisals ; and, in spite 
of Mr. Spencer's emphatic conclusions, we may deem 
the question still unsettled. At any rate, that was 
the case in France in 1837, when, in a discussion 
worthy to be remembered, Lamartine, with all the 
charm of his eloquence, defended the cause of clas- 
sical literature. He claimed for it the honour of 
being the vehicle of moral ideas, a sacred portion 
of the inherited wealth of civilization: "With- 
out literature," said he, "humanity would perish;" 

1 On this question of Educational Values, see Chapter VI, in 
Bain's Science of Education. 



HERBERT SPENCER 21 

on the other hand, Arago, with all the authority 
of his learning, asserted the superiority of scientific 
studies. Nor was it settled in England in 1836, 
when the philosopher Hamilton replied to Dr. 
Whewell, who desired that education should be 
established on a basis of mathematics, as was then 
becoming the practice at the Cambridge Univer- 
sity. Hamilton pronounced in favour of liter- 
ary studies, and he proved forcibly that educa- 
tion, if reduced to the abstract sciences, would be 
narrowed and stunted. " Geometry," to use the ex- 
pression of Voltaire, ' ' trains upright minds only. ' ' In 
this particular controversy, however, it was only a 
question of mathematics, whereas Mr. Spencer took 
the larger subject and discussed it in all its breadth 
— the whole of science in its universal aspect versus 
the classic humanities. The dispute was not ended 
in 1866 when J. S. Mill, in a speech before the Univer- 
sity of St. Andrews, refused to sacrifice either study 
in favour of the other, holding that both contain 
elements equally indispensable for education; he 
exclaimed on that occasion, with a vivacious freedom 
of speech: "Do you ask whether we should resort 
to languages or to science in order to organize gen- 
eral education, that is equivalent to inquiring whether 
painters ought to be artists with the pencil or with 
the brush, whether a tailor should make coats or 



22 HERBERT SPENCER 

breeches; why not both, I ask?" And it seems as 
if the question were not finally decided even to-day. 
During the course of the important inquiry lately 
carried out by the French Parliament, certain voices, 
even those of humanists, asserted that classical 
literature is condemned to disappear sooner or later. 
Other witnesses, and these not the least important 
authorities on French education, without denying 
the legitimate and increasing need of instruction in 
science, persisted in demanding for literature the 
first, if not the only, place as culture material. 

Nevertheless, the friends of scientific education 
are numerous, and they do not date from recent years 
only. Mr. Spencer had predecessors : Rabelais, Con- 
dorcet, and many others. Diderot may be specially 
mentioned. He, before Auguste Comte, tried to 
classify the sciences in order of rank, according to 
their measure of utility or power of serving univer- 
sal needs. In his scheme of studies he scornfully 
relegated literature to the last school years. Even 
poets have protested against the abuse of literary 
studies. Milton, three hundred years ago, groaned 
over the lot of schoolboys obliged, by a wrongly 
conceived education, "to glue their faces," he said, 
"to the platitudes of the grammarian." The far- 
ther mankind advances, the more they desire in- 
struction in science. In France, M. Berthelot in- 



HERBERT SPENCER 23 

sists on "the need of habituating children in early 
years to scientific conceptions and methods/ ' classic 
instruction " becoming more and more reserved for 
the minority." Even Renan states that "scien- 
tific investigations should not be left only to ama- 
teurs and inquisitive minds." * For England, it suf- 
fices to cite Lubbock, who asserts that scientific 
education is "a national necessity." Lastly, Darwin 
agrees with Mr. Spencer about reform in education 
as well as about the origin of species. When, in 
1852, he was engaged in educating his seven children, 
and resigned himself to sending the eldest of his sons 
to Rugby Public School, he wrote: "No one could 
despise more sincerely than I do the stupid stereo- 
typed education of former days, and yet I lacked 
the courage to break its chains." Mr. Spencer broke 
them more than once. But, above all, he attempted 
what had not been done hitherto, to demonstrate 
fully and methodically the utility and the paramount 
importance of science considered as the essential 
factor in determining a man's fate in life, and hence 
the instrument of his education. 

For what end is a man born? To be happy. 
Happy, but certainly not in the sense a foolish ego- 
ism or narrow utilitarianism sometimes imagines; 

1 Les Services que la science rend au peuple, a conference held in 
1869 and published in the Grande Revue, June, 1901. 



24 HERBERT SPENCER 

happy in the noblest sense of the word, compre- 
hending the happiness of others equally with our 
personal well-being, — the satisfaction of altruistic 
sentiments as well as of egoistic inclinations. Happi- 
ness signifies a life in which all essential activities 
find exercise, lived out to the full. It is a fife of 
the relative perfection of human beings who are 
still far from the goal of their evolution, for the day 
will come when mankind will be absolutely perfect. 
Humanity may reach perfection in this world, but 
only after passing through a long childhood, long 
ages of labour. Provided that men live long 
enough, and that the constitution of things remains 
as it is now, the modifications which they are ex- 
periencing and those yet to come must culminate 
in perfection. It is certain that what we call evil 
and immorality will finally disappear. It is certain 
that the destiny of man is to be perfect. . . . Phi- 
losophers used to place the golden age in the past; 
perfection they looked upon as the direct gift of the 
Creator to his creature. Mr. Spencer greets it afar 
in the future as the work of centuries of effort on 
the part of nature, the result of the ceaseless progress 
of a humanity moving towards perfection from age 
to age. Little by little a wealth of new sentiments 
are grafted on to a trunk of primitive instincts, and, 
finally, thanks to hereditary accumulations, we shall 



HERBERT SPENCER 25 

have insensibly entered into, and consolidated, our full 
patrimony. Rousseau's ideal man was an imaginary 
primitive being, formed by Providence all at once. 
The "full" man of Spencer is the hard-won product 
of evolution and heredity, — not a Pallas Athense 
who steps full armed from the head of Jupiter, but 
the offspring of a race which in its last expansion 
reaches the goal of its evolution. He is a being 
elaborated by successive generations, a being in 
whom all the qualities, gradually acquired, will 
be summed up, and who, by means of progressive 
adoptions will have gained the power of living in 
society, "as a fish lives in the water and a bird in 
the air." Then man will have become, if not a god, 
yet at least a perfect animal, directed in everything 
by excellent, infallible instincts. Altruistic senti- 
ments, transmitted by heredity, will exercise an 
all-powerful influence on his conduct. He will ac- 
complish moral actions with ease, as a bird builds 
its nest, and a spider spins its web. Effort and 
struggle to avoid evil and follow the good will cease. 
Obedience to habits formed by ancestors, and trans- 
formed as they pass on from one generation to an- 
other into irresistible instincts, will be pleasant 
and easy. 

Still we are far from this terrestrial paradise, which 
at present is a mere dream. We are only crossing 



26 HERBERT SPENCER 

one of the stages along the route thither, and mean- 
while, until evolution and heredity have accom- 
plished their task, we must think of man as he is, — 
man yet very badly adapted to the conditions under 
which he must live. He must be made ready, as 
far as possible, for that perfect life which is the goal 
of human destiny. We are yet in a state where 
effort is necessary. And hence the need of educa- 
tion becomes evident, however much its efforts may 
be weakened and limited by the inexorable laws 
which rule over the onward march of humanity. 
Besides this, education does not only prove advan- 
tageous to those who receive it ; it helps to form 
the character of the children of educated people 
before their birth. The more the present generations 
regulate their actions according to laws prescribed 
by education, the more fruitful will be the springs 
of life transmitted by them to following generations. 
It is clear that from this point of view the mission 
of education assumes a still wider and nobler aspect, 
since it is no longer a personal matter, — the inter- 
est of the individual, — but is the interest of the whole 
of humanity, the progress of which will be retarded 
or hastened according to the degree in which teach- 
ers, during each period, have accomplished their 
task, whether well or ill. 
What, then, will be that education which may be 



HERBERT SPENCER 27 

defined as an individual and provisional preparation 
for the complete and finally determined life of hu- 
manity as a whole ? To discover this, we must first 
decide what are the elements of a complete life; 
we must enumerate and classify the various forms 
of activity which constitute it. When this has been 
done, we shall know what is man's true destiny, and 
in consequence we shall have a criterion, — a stand- 
ard of appreciation which will enable us to make 
a rational choice amongst the different subjects of 
study, and decide the relative value of the various 
knowledges; for any knowledge will have value in 
proportion as it favours more or less the exercise of 
those essential activities which conduce both to 
individual and social happiness. 

Nothing could be clearer than the picture of the 
manifold functions of life sketched by Mr. Spencer. 
He distributes them, certainly, under distinct cate- 
gories ; but he does not forget to note that they are 
closely linked and fused the one with the other, that 
they form a whole, a mass, no element of which may 
be omitted and neglected without injury. 

The first business of a man is to live a healthy 
physical life. If he does not know how to guaran- 
tee health and strength, he will be unfitted for 
activity of every other kind. It is then expedient, 
when classifying the different human functions, to 



28 HERBERT SPENCER 

put those acts which tend directly to insure personal 
preservation in the first rank. 

But to be well and healthy is not enough ; we must 
also be able to earn daily bread, and even something 
more. From this springs a second group of activities, 
those which concern the production and acquisition 
of material things, all things necessary for life, and 
which also assist, though indirectly, in securing per- 
sonal safety and preservation. 

When the individual has secured means of living 
in comfort, the horizon widens before him. A man 
should employ his strength in the service of his 
family; so a third category of his labours includes 
those which aim at nourishing and training children. 

The cares of the citizen come next to those of the 
family. These involve a new series of activities 
which are, however, subordinate to family duties; 
for family prosperity is the foundation of the pros- 
perity of the city. 

Lastly, human existence is completed and crowned 
by the exercise of activities which we may express 
by one word, "aesthetics"; these, making use of 
our hours of leisure, satisfy feeling and taste in the 
disinterested enjoyment of literature and art. 

We can see at once what will be the education 
constructed in answer to this conception of life, — a 
positive and practical education, planned for indus- 



HERBERT SPENCER 29 

trial and business people, in which a liberal culture 
of human faculties enters only by way of comple- 
ment; where instruction in literature and the fine 
arts, being left to the last place, subject, also, to 
the possibility of spare time, seem almost like mere 
accessories. The fact is, that in the classification 
proposed by Mr. Spencer there is a gap, — a serious 
omission. The reproach has been made against 
certain educationists, and especially against Rous- 
seau, that they exaggerate the value of the indi- 
vidual ("Phomme en soi"), that they sacrifice the 
useful to the ideal, and neglect adaptation to the 
needs of life for general culture of the faculties. We 
must bring against Mr. Spencer the opposite re- 
proach. He considers the workman, the artisan, 
the father of the family, the citizen, but he altogether 
forgets human personality. It seems as if he were 
not concerned at all about those inner activities 
which make a man w T hat he is, which develop his 
intellectual and moral qualities, his conscience, his 
intelligence, his feeling, and his will. His pupil 
would be stuffed with the knowledge appropriate to 
the needs of a useful life, but we do not find him 
prepared for the obligations of morality. He would 
live longer than other men. He would succeed better 
in business affairs. But how would he learn to be 
good, wise, prudent in judgment, strong-willed, — 



30 HERBERT SPENCER 

in short, a true man? We ought not to say, pos- 
sibly, that he would be nothing but a machine 
adapted to the satisfaction of material and egoistic 
needs on the one hand, and on the other to the re- 
quirements of family and social life. But he would 
certainly not have been educated in himself ; nothing 
would have been done to insure personal develop- 
ment and perfection. 

In his list of human activities, therefore, we shall 
ask Mr. Spencer to insert in the second place, imme- 
diately after those which have regard to the care of 
the body, activities which train the moral sense, 
which form the personality in its full strength and 
dignity; the activities which every man, however 
humble and poor, employs, and by employing, de- 
velops his conscience, his heart, and character. If 
this correction is accepted, the whole plan of life and, 
in consequence, of education will be changed; for 
literature will then claim higher rank than the humble 
place conceded to it by Mr. Spencer, — merely a means 
of recreation, of distraction, an addition to a life 
the needs of which are already satisfied; it will 
demand a place preserved for it by the side of the 
sciences, as a means of general education. 

This reservation granted, — and it is, however, 
of first importance, and in proportion as we follow 
out the subject in detail its force becomes apparent, — 



HERBERT SPENCER 31 

everything else in this part of Mr. Spencer's demon- 
stration deserves praise. The whole statement of 
it is eminently clear; he establishes the imperative 
need of scientific instruction to enlighten and direct 
those human activities which he desired to enter in 
his list. His luminous exposition should here be 
quoted word for word. 

In the first place, in regard to preservation of 
the individual, it is easy to show that a man is ex- 
posed to great dangers if he has not studied physi- 
ology and is unacquainted with the laws of life. In 
this part of education, "Nature" herself, for that 
matter, assumes the chief role. Since health is, of 
all things, the most important, for it is the condition 
of everything else, " Nature " did not wish to leave its 
fate at the mercy of our ignorance or stupidity ; she 
has taken the duty of providing for it into her own 
infallible control. The sensations with which "Na- 
ture" has provided us, — the necessity of taking food, 
the appetite which guides even the baby at the breast, 
the feelings of cold and heat, brain fatigue, — these all 
give warning of our needs, or reveal to us the perils 
that threaten us. They are authoritative coun- 
sellors, whose advice we are obliged to follow. In 
brief, to quote Mr. Spencer: "To speak teleologi- 
cally, Nature has provided efficient safeguards to 
health," vigilant sentinels who mount guard around 



32 HERBERT SPENCER 

our bodies. This is the first, but not the last, time 
that we find the philosopher of evolution appealing 
to " Nature" as to a kind of " Providence," who 
watches over the interests of humanity. There is, 
then, nothing to be done but to let " Nature" alone, 
to respect her indications and profit by them : that 
is what Rousseau had already desired. 

But it is necessary for us to add conclusions 
drawn by science to the instinctive suggestions of 
Nature; it is in this that Mr. Spencer continues 
and completes the work of Rousseau. How 
many people are subject to chronic illnesses 
or to sharp attacks, to general debility or to early 
decay and death, through ignorance of hygienic 
precautions and physiological laws ! "Our physical 
sins," as Mr. Spencer terms them, make life into one 
long mortification, into a burden or torment, instead 
of it being the continuous pleasure and blessing that 
it might be. 

We have nothing to say against this; but the 
objection raised above is disturbing, and it causes 
us to hesitate. Science is certainly necessary as a 
guide in caring for our health; but is it enough? 
Are knowledge and ability the same thing ? Above 
all, are to know and to desire — to will the thing — 
the same? Hygiene instructs us as to the physical 
ills that follow imprudent actions; is that enough 



HERBERT SPENCER 33 

to inspire the will and the strength to avoid such 
actions if they are pleasant? In order to resist 
pleasurable temptations, the injurious effects of 
which are well known to us, is it not indispensable 
that we should be armed with more than scientific 
knowledge, that we should be at least imbued with 
the feeling of our dignity as human beings? Does 
not Mr. Spencer himself, indeed, acknowledge in 
his chapter on " Moral Education" (by a contradic- 
tion to which reference has already been made, 1 ) that 
knowledge is not conscience, much less is it will. 

Science, then, is necessary to aid nature in its 
task of personal preservation ; it is not less necessary 
to insure success in the whole field of professional 
enterprise, and also to provide every man with the 
means of gaining his livelihood. We need not dwell 
upon this; Mr. Spencer has here no opponents. 
Who would desire to dispute with him the indis- 
pensability of technical instruction; that the pro- 
duction and distribution of wealth — that is to say, 
industrial and commercial operations — are rendered 
possible only by a knowledge of physics, biology, 
or other sciences; that both the producer and the 
merchant require mathematics; that the surveyor, 
architect, and mason alike depend on geometry; 
the builder, the mechanic, and the agriculturist on 

1 Mr. Bertrand, U Enseignement integral, p. 198. 



34 HERBERT SPENCER 

chemistry; in fact, that " there is hardly a single 
industry nowadays which does not rely upon 
chemical science. . . ." As Arago said, in 1836, 
" Sugar is not made from beet-root by fine words," 
and "soda is not extracted from sea-water by Alex- 
andrines." No unbeliever or opponent is found to 
detract from the praise of science for the services 
which it renders to material interests. Everybody 
acknowledges that it has inspired innumerable in- 
ventions and modes of application which have 
transformed the world; that it has been able to 
provide the peasantry with comforts formerly even 
out of the reach of kings. For these reasons, scien- 
tific teaching, adapted to the needs of the various 
professions, should spread by leaps and bounds ; all 
the industrial nations, and especially Germany, under- 
stand its importance. But is it true that it answers 
to all human needs ? Amid the varied positive and 
practical branches of education which Mr. Spencer, 
with justifiable enthusiasm, recommends to us, does 
he not forget something ? Education itself. Science 
has analyzed the physical forces and yoked them 
to man's service. But, although science has suc- 
ceeded in setting in motion and launching across 
space its steam-engines and electrical machines, is 
it fully proved that it is also able to develop and 
train the moral forces without which mankind, 



HERBERT SPENCER 35 

despite his fulness of material wealth and the ocean 
of machines swelling around him, will remain in 
a lower and more degraded condition than that 
for which his destiny had designed him? 

To turn to another question, Is Mr. Spencer suffi- 
ciently concerned about knowing whether instruc- 
tion in science is appropriate for every age, whether 
it can be really grasped by young children ? There 
are some difficult sciences, and in all the sciences 
some parts are obscure. Will the mind of the child 
be able to understand them, especially if, as in 
Mr. Spencer's scheme, he is not prepared for it by a 
previous general culture? J. S. MilPs suggestions 
in the lecture from which we have already quoted 
are surely much sounder: " Special knowledge is 
sought after only by a certain number of young 
men, and it is only when they have completed their 
education, properly so called, that they should be 
permitted to enter upon it. The good or bad use 
which they will make of each knowledge will depend 
chiefly on their mental character, and character 
can be formed only by general education. Before 
being lawyers, doctors, merchants, or manufacturers, 
they must be men. ..." In this matter it is 
J. Stuart Mill who is in agreement with Rousseau. 

While a man is acquiring the professional knowl- 
edge which will permit him to succeed in business, 



36 HERBERT SPENCER 

he is not working only for himself, he is assur- 
ing a competence for his family. But the care 
of a family demands more than that the future 
father and mother have been initiated into the art 
of training children. In present-day education no 
steps are taken to prepare the parents to be the first 
educators of their sons and daughters. With the 
touch of humour characteristic of Mr. Spencer, he 
writes: "If by some strange chance not a vestige 
of us descended to the remote future save a pile of 
our school-books or some college examination papers, 
we may imagine how puzzled an antiquary of the 
period would be on finding in them no sign that the 
learners were ever likely to be parents. This 
must have been the curriculum for their celibates, 
we may fancy him concluding. I perceive here an 
elaborate preparation for many things, especially for 
reading the books of extinct nations and of coexist- 
ing nations (from which, indeed, it seems clear that 
these people had very little worth reading in their 
own tongue), but I find no reference whatever to 
the bringing up of children. They could not have 
been so absurd as to omit all training for this gravest 
of responsibilities. Evidently, then, this was the 
school course of one of their monastic orders." 

Mr. Spencer will not be to blame if things are not 
different in the future. No question lies nearer his 



HERBERT SPENCER 37 

heart. "Is it not monstrous," he says, "that the 
fate of a new generation should be left to the chances 
of unreasoning custom, impulse, fancy, — joined 
with the suggestions of ignorant nurses and the prej- 
udiced counsel of grandmothers?" But we must 
repeat again and again, before men will listen, that 
a study of the natural laws of the development of 
body and mind is the first duty of parents. Mr. 
James Sully will say the same thing thirty years 
after Mr. Spencer in his Studies of Childhood. He 
will remind mothers especially "that it is indispensa- 
ble that they have an intimate knowledge of the na- 
ture of the delicate little speechless beings to whom 
they have transmitted life, and should now give 
a soul," in order to lead them upward along the path 
of humanity. How many mothers have responded 
to this appeal? . . . 

The training of citizens is no less obligatory than 
the training of parents. Here, again, science is to 
be the teacher — but which science? Doubtless, 
history — but is history a science ? It does not ap- 
pear in the classification of the sciences tabulated 
by Mr. Spencer. As we are aware he distributes the 
sciences under three categories: abstract sciences, 
logic and mathematics; abstract-concrete sciences, 
mechanics, physics, chemistry; and, finally, con- 
crete sciences, astronomy, geology, biology, psy- 



38 HERBERT SPENCER 

chology, sociology. In any case it cannot be the 
customary history, the mass of dead facts taught in 
schools and colleges, — a sterile kind of learning, — or 
aristocratic history which wastes our time in telling 
us incidents from the life of monarchs or from diplo- 
matic and court intrigues ; nor will it be military his- 
tory, the history which enumerates the Fifteen Deci- 
sive Battles of the World. Is a citizen necessarily more 
enlightened about his vote at the next elections 
because he is acquainted with affairs of the past of 
no importance to-day? By no means. We may, 
if we will, study the trivialities of history from curios- 
ity, or for amusement ; but they can have no prac- 
tical influence on the actions of our contemporaries. 
The history which is important in the past and pres- 
ent both is the history of the people, of their institu- 
tions and customs, their beliefs and laws ; it may be 
described in a word as Descriptive Sociology, and it 
should help us to penetrate into the inner life of 
social groups, explain their progress, their intellec- 
tual and moral condition during various centuries, 
and also their industrial organizations, trades, and 
corporations; in short, it should reveal to us the 
laws of social evolution. 

There is much to reply to this. Can we agree 
with Mr. Spencer that the history of military affairs, 
of the great heroic struggles which have decided the 



HERBERT SPENCER 39 

fate of whole nations, is of no value in forming the 
character of the citizen ? Mr. Spencer sacrifices here, 
as always, the education of the emotions to positive 
instruction. His citizen would be able to analyze 
the institutions of his country; but will he have 
learnt to love it ? Will he not lack the one thing that 
can make all knowledge, even the fullest, of use, — 
a reverent loyalty to the constitution, a love of 
humanity and patriotic enthusiasm? On the other 
hand, how can we agree to eliminate from historical 
studies the biography of great men and the narra- 
tive of noble deeds? Mr. Spencer relies too much 
on nature, on what he calls " moral intuitions," — 
a kind of instinct acquired slowly through successive 
generations. There is, without doubt, a mysterious 
hereditary transmission from parent to child through 
the blood; but should there not be another kind of 
communication between one generation and the 
next, also of value, — communication based on con- 
scious imitation, on a rational admiration for fine 
examples of past ages? 

Mr. Spencer's Education comprises everything 
that is essential for forming positive and practical 
minds. But nowhere in the book is any concern to 
be found for the training of the emotions and sen- 
timents of the heart. 

The final limit to human activity, literary and 



40 HERBERT SPENCER 

artistic education, these, under Mr. Spencer's treat- 
ment, reveal the same lack, — a want of feeling and 
inspiration. One must become an artist or a poet 
by first becoming a scholar. This is no new paradox. 
Diderot said that the real poet is a living encyclo- 
paedia, and that the characteristic feature distin- 
guishing Voltaire from his rivals is " knowledge." 
Mr. Spencer puts forth specious arguments to justify 
this position. Since Art — painting, sculpture, or 
poetry — is only the representation of natural 
beauty, or of the inner emotional life, an artist cannot 
succeed in his work unless he is first of all a natural- 
ist or a psychologist. Also, in order to forecast his 
effects, to discover the right tone, an artist must 
realize the kind of impressions and emotions which 
his works will produce in the minds of his hearers or 
spectators ; therefore, on this side, a knowledge of 
psychology is also required. Necessary for the 
production of art, science is therefore necessary 
for its appreciation. And, lastly, there is not the 
opposition between science and art which is com- 
monly imagined ; Mr. Spencer shows us in charming 
language that science is full of poetry. Think you 
(he says) that a drop of water, which to the vulgar 
eye is but a drop of water, loses anything in the eye 
of a physicist who knows that its elements are held 
together by a force which, if suddenly liberated, 



HERBERT SPENCER 41 

would produce a flash of lightning? Think you 
that what is carelessly looked upon by the unini- 
tiated as a mere snowflake does not suggest higher 
associations to one who has seen through a micro- 
scope the wondrously varied and elegant forms of 
snow crystals ? Think you that the rounded rock, 
marked with parallel scratches, calls up as much 
poetry in an ignorant mind as in the mind of a geolo- 
gist, who knows that over this rock a glacier slid 
a million years ago ? 

That science may be poetry, that it opens up 
fresh sources of inspiration bursting forth from 
observation of nature, granted! But whether, in 
forming a poet, science may be substituted for liter- 
ary studies, this is quite a different question. In 
any case, science will not give him practice in the 
art of expressing his thoughts ; neither can the lyric 
poet owe to science the peculiar enthusiasm with 
which he is animated. To say that the dramatic 
poet is a scientist because he " observes" the ways 
of men is to play with words, for his observation is 
in no way scientific. However, let us stop here. 
If there is a "soul of truth" amid Mr. Spencer's 
errors, we must admit that it is well hidden under 
sophistical exaggeration. How can it be main- 
tained seriously, for instance, that musical com- 
positions are bad only when they lack truth — in 



42 HERBERT SPENCER 

other words, science? Science, yes; but science 
based on artistic initiative, on a study of musical 
masterpieces, and, above all, on warmth of feeling 
and glowing inspiration; and these have nothing 
in common with the inductions and deductions of 
pure science. 

Above all, objection should be made to Mr. Spen- 
cer's reduction of aesthetic culture to the place as- 
signed to it: " Postponing them (literature and the 
Fine Arts), as we do to things that bear more vitally 
on human welfare, ... we yield to none in the 
value we attach to aesthetic culture and its pleasures. 
Without painting, sculpture, music, poetry, and the 
emotions produced by natural beauty of every kind, 
life would lose half its charm. . . ." He is none the 
less convinced that in education, as in life, taste may 
dictate our occupations during leisure hours only. 
Leisure hours will doubtless increase when the forces 
of nature have been completely subdued and ren- 
dered useful to man. Renan also dreamt of a time 
when the progress of science would become, as it 
were, "the redemption of the workman"; when, 
relieved of material cares, humanity would be free 
to pursue aesthetic pleasures. The same idea had 
been expressed by Richard Wagner already in 1850, 
in his book on Art and Revolution. The error con- 
sists in confining art and literature within a purely 



HERBERT SPENCER 43 

recreative sphere. Mr. Spencer looks upon them 
only as the " efflorescence" of civilized life. In 
consequence, we must concern ourselves with them 
only in the last place, as the gardener with the 
flower of a plant when he has provided for the growth 
of its roots, stem, and leaves. On the contrary, we 
hold that aesthetic culture is indispensable in order 
to provide for the human plant its substance, — the 
moral nutrition which it needs. ^Esthetics are not 
merely the crown of civilization ; they are its founda- 
tion, one of the essential principles of intellectual life. 
So far, Mr. Spencer has considered science only 
as the guide in life, as the light illuminating the path 
of mankind. But he knows well that the question 
is not exhausted, and that objections arise. To 
answer these, it would be necessary to prove that 
science is not simply a store of useful knowledge ; 
that it is educative as well as instructive; that it 
" forms" the mind as much as it " informs" it; that 
while instructing, it also disciplines the mind. This 
is the crucial point, and we must acknowledge that 
our author treats it somewhat lightly. He is as 
moderate and brief in explaining this second part 
of the question as he roamed at ease over the first. 
" We are obliged," he says, " to treat this division of 
our subject with comparative brevity;" and he de- 
votes to it, in fact, only five or six pages. When he 



44 HERBERT SPENCER 

adds that " happily no very lengthened treatment of 
it is needed/' we are far from sharing his opinion; it 
is the chief question, — a question important above 
all others. 

The general reason expressed by Mr. Spencer to 
justify his faith in the educative value of science 
gives a shock of surprise. It is an argument a priori, 
drawn from the finality of Nature and its wise and 
benevolent intentions. "We may be quite sure," 
he says, " that the acquirement of those classes of 
facts which are most useful for regulating conduct 
involves a mental exercise best fitted for strengthen- 
ing the faculties." To think otherwise " would be 
utterly contrary to the beautiful economy of Nature." 
In other words, " Nature" knows very well what it 
is doing; it cannot make a mistake and form a 
plan useful and good for one thing, useless and bad 
for another. Let us admit that this is pushing op- 
timism and teleological faith a long way. It makes 
a false use of Nature, treating it as an infallible and 
foreseeing power, wholly concerned in economizing 
the time and strength of man. Mr. Spencer per- 
sonifies, almost deifies, Nature — we note that he 
writes the word always with a capital letter. We 
must not be too astonished at this. The doctrine 
of evolution, despite its positivist aspect, is a phi- 
losophy which in reality attributes the highest degree 



HERBERT SPENCER 45 

of intelligence to things in themselves; it asserts 
that Nature, by its unconscious, but sure and regular, 
work, produces gradually an ordered, harmonious 
world. It has no preestablished and predetermined 
harmony, such as that of the old philosophy ; but it 
has a harmony in process of becoming, so to speak, 
in the act of organization, which is being realized from 
day to day, — a work carried on ceaselessly by a 
mysterious and unknowable intelligence which pre- 
sides over the destiny of the world. 

Mr. Spencer, however, is not satisfied with this 
expression of faith in Nature for that would be 
running away from a difficulty. He wants to discuss 
it and "pass on to proofs." But the discussion is 
short and his proofs insufficient. His demonstra- 
tion amounts to this: that the study of science 
can exercise memory and judgment as much as the 
study of language. If it were simply a question of 
learning names and faces by heart, it is evident 
that the sciences would present the child with a 
field as vast, and perhaps more vast, than that of 
language. Let us take, for example, natural science. 
Simple and compound bodies, the stars of the Milky 
Way, the three hundred and twenty kinds of plants, 
the two million forms of animal life — these can 
furnish the memory of a pupil as well or better than 
the dates of history or the thousands of words of 



46 HERBERT SPENCER 

any language you like to mention. But, what 
would the child gain by the change? It is true 
that, according to Mr. Spencer, science ranks 
above literature as an instrument for cultivating 
judgment, and weakness of judgment is a universal 
evil. But it is by no means generally accepted that 
exercises in translation — an essential part of the 
study of language, whether living or dead — do not 
tend to cultivate judgment and reason. Could it 
be maintained that science by its personal observa- 
tion, its demand for experiment and verification, and 
its rigorous use of demonstration frees the mind, and 
that literature, on the other hand, enslaves it ? The 
dictionary imperatively declares "the word means 
so and so"; the grammar states that "this is the 
rule"; thus the study of language increases a ser- 
vile respect for authority. But, on the other hand, 
science, at least the part of it which can be taught 
to little children, has also its rules and axioms 
and its yet more absolute formulae dictata. More- 
over, the study of literature is not limited to the study 
of words and of the laws of syntax ; must we reckon 
for nothing the beautiful thoughts and noble senti- 
ments that we gather from the works of great writers, 
and all those eternal truths which help to liberate 
the mind and heart ? 
In this very controversial question of the educa- 



HERBERT SPENCER 47 

tive value of science, there is one specially interest- 
ing point : the sciences are very different in aim and 
method, and they cannot, therefore, claim to exert 
the same influence in mental discipline, granted that 
they exert any influence at all. Mr. Spencer has 
examined this delicate subject, not in Education, 
but in a book published a few years afterwards, 
Introduction to Social Science, 1873. He there main- 
tains that it is only through science that we can ac- 
quire good habits of thought; but he recognizes 
that the sciences differ, and that each of them tends 
to discipline the mind in a unique and limited sense. 
He does not conceal the dangerous effect of every 
exclusive study. "Men who have a great aptitude 
for observation are rarely clever in generalization/ ' 
and reciprocally. There is antagonism between 
perception and reason. Any intellectual discipline 
whatever, when it is abused, overdevelops certain 
faculties and leaves others to atrophy. The ab- 
stract sciences, for instance, make plain the neces- 
sary relationship of cause and effect, of conclusion 
and premises; but there is a reverse side to this 
medal: a mind trained in mathematics, with this 
peculiar bent, is not skilled in unravelling practical 
problems, with their contingent circumstances. 
Well practised in the solution of questions, the 
premises of which are simple and clearly defined, 



48 HERBERT SPENCER 

the mathematician becomes bewildered and loses 
his way amid complex and uncertain concrete 
realities. We must find the necessary corrective 
for the limitations and defects of mathematical 
training in other sciences. Mr. Spencer, continuing 
his analysis, meets finally with a like effect in every 
science. . . . The chief inference to be drawn from 
this is surely that to form an all-round mind we 
must not instruct in one science only, we must 
teach all sciences in order that the special tendencies 
developed by one may be corrected by another. 
Now to do this is impossible. Life is too short for 
a man to cover all the studies. "What a perfect 
woman I should become/' said Madame Sevigne, " if 
I were to live two hundred years." How wonderful 
would be the intellect of a man who had the time 
to learn all that might be taught him! Since our 
life is "but a span," we are compelled to choose, and 
even Mr. Spencer appears to be perplexed what to 
choose. 

At times, paying no regard to the shortness of life, 
and hence of study, he appears inclined to demand 
from students efforts that are superhuman, and 
that aspire to compass the entire field of knowledge. 
In this connection he draws an ingenious analogy: 
Let us imagine (he says) a room splendidly decorated 
and lit by only one candle, which is placed in a cor- 



HERBERT SPENCER 49 

ner ; it can illuminate only one bit of the decoration ; 
all the rest is plunged in darkness. Let us imagine, 
next, that a hundred electric lamps are suddenly 
lit, and that they illuminate the whole of the vast 
chamber and everything in it; here we have a pic- 
ture of the spectacle presented by nature to an in- 
tellect partially cultivated, on the one hand ; on the 
other, to a mind in which shines the light of all the 
sciences. 

This picture is fine, but it does not correspond, in 
the intellectual breadth it presupposes, to the modest 
results contemplated by the pedagogy of Mr. Spen- 
cer. The scientific instruction extolled by him is, 
indeed, very far from what we understand as an 
" all-round education." It is true every one, merely 
to keep himself in good health and fulfil his duties 
as parent and citizen, is urged to study physiology, 
psychology, and also elementary sociology. But 
beyond these subjects, required generally, there is 
for each student only a partial initiation into one 
restricted domain of science. If men were obliged 
later to follow all professions, one after another, it 
would doubtless be necessary to cover the whole 
field of science ; but, since he can have only one trade 
at a time, he is called upon to examine only the 
knowledge that has gathered about his special occu- 
pation. In this way Mr. Spencer, who introduced 



50 HERBERT SPENCER 

himself as an apostle and a somewhat ambitious 
apostle of universality in scientific instruction, at 
the end of his discussion turns out to be a rather 
ordinary advocate of professional education. 

In the last place, in view of the probable effects 
of an education purely scientific, and which could 
be beneficial to the intellect only if it covered all 
sciences, — an impossibility for adults, and still 
more so for youths, — and since such an education 
is, perforce, partial and restricted, and hence will 
develop certain faculties to the injury of others, 
are we not justified in questioning whether the best 
intellectual discipline may not be expected from 
a flexible and varied plan of studies, — one in which 
fair scope, but not the whole field, is granted to 
science, and where literature keeps its legitimate 
influence? By thus calling to its aid manifold 
instruments of instruction, the teaching process is 
able to arouse the whole range of higher intellec- 
tual faculties: it is able to exercise the judgment 
as much as the memory, the imagination as much 
as the reason ; and, as J. S. Mill has said, our pupils 
will at the end know not only their chief occupation 
thoroughly, they will know also something of all 
subjects interesting to humanity and which are able 
to assist in the development of a perfect mind. 



Ill 

The general principle of education has been set 
forth; it is the acquisition of scientific knowledge. 
It now remains to be seen how Mr. Spencer applies 
this to education in its intellectual, physical, and 
moral aspects. 1 In the chapter devoted to intellec- 
tual education, three parts may be distinguished: 
a very keen criticism of the old education, an exami- 
nation of past progress, and, lastly, a brief summing 
up of new methods and of some of their forms of 
application. 

Mr. Spencer's fire and sword shine most brightly 
in criticism. The positive statements lack definite- 
ness, and reveal the author's lack of professional 
experience ; he borrows the greater part of his ideas 
from Pestalozzi, and from further back than Pesta- 
lozzi, from Rousseau. 

Historians of education are indebted to Mr. 
Spencer for certain general considerations as inter- 

1 Mr. Spencer has relegated the discussion of physical education 
to the end of his book. By good right it would have been more 
logical to have begun with it. 

61 



52 HERBERT SPENCER 

esting as they are sound. He fully established the 
truth that there are close relationships between 
the social, political, religious, and even economic 
conditions which distinguish a country at any period, 
and the systems of education which are then pre- 
ferred in it. When men received their creed and 
its interpretations from an infallible authority 
deigning no explanations, it was natural that the 
teaching of children should be purely dogmatic. 
While " believe and ask no questions" was the 
maxim of the church, it was fitly the maxim of the 
school. Along with political despotism, stern in 
its inexorable commands, ruling by force of terror, 
visiting trifling crimes with death, and implacable 
in its vengeance on the disloyal, there necessarily 
grew up an academic discipline similarly harsh, — 
a discipline of multiplied injunctions and blows for 
every breach of them, a discipline of unlimited 
autocracy upheld by rods and ferules and the 
black hole. But these things have changed, in 
proportion as the spirit of liberty has entered into 
the church and into politics. We are no longer 
living in an age when, " acting on the principle of the 
greatest amount of suffering," men imagined that 
the more pleasures they refused the more virtuous 
they were; and when, in consequence, in a mood 
of austere asceticism, they deemed essential an 



HERBERT SPENCER 53 

education that opposed the wishes of children and 
nipped in the bud their spontaneous activity as 
much as possible. We are now far from thinking 
that natural inclinations are diabolical temptations. 
Lastly, even economic ideas are connected in some 
way or other with the ruling educational theories. 
The school prejudice that the mind of the child can 
be formed to order at will, under a control the de- 
tails of which are minutely regulated, corresponded 
to a commercial system of protection and prohibition. 
But with free trade, causing barriers set up against 
international relationships to fall, the chains which 
bound the liberty of the child and separated the 
pupil from the master have also been broken. 

But more than all the wrong notions which, 
through being generally accepted, have worked mis- 
chief in education, there is, according to Mr. Spencer, 
a tendency, as ancient as the world itself, which 
explains the long, slow routine that education has 
pursued, — the tendency to prefer the pleasant to 
the useful. A taste for ornament preceded the 
adoption of dress ; of this Mr. Spencer sought proofs 
amongst savage races. The Indian woman of the 
Orinoco, who does not hesitate to go out of her hut 
naked, would not consent to appear in public with- 
out first painting herself. The Red Indian bears 
the sharpest pain joyfully in order to be beautifully 



54 HERBERT SPENCER 

tattooed. . . . This taste for ornament passed 
from bodily decoration to mental acquisitions. 
Men desired intellectual brilliance before common 
sense. Talents that give pleasure have been pre- 
ferred to those that are of use. Studies that win 
social success, establish worldly power, or form brill- 
iant wits have been placed above solid and prac- 
tical knowledge. We have, so to speak, fashioned 
ornamental rather than useful members of society. 
We have aspired rather to " appear" than to "be." 
Hence a kind of superficial education, which has 
omitted essential things whilst insisting on futilities, 
on empty and superficial knowledge. 

Darwin accused English schools in the middle of 
the last century of narrowing the curriculum too 
much, of paying too much attention to instruction 
in classics, of exercising only the memory, and, lastly, 
that the effect of this purely formal instruction was 
to cramp the mind, because it neglected studies 
which, by appealing to observation and reason, 
arouse curiosity and interest. Mr. Spencer sounds 
the same alarms, expressing them yet more fully. 
He does not approve of any of the traditional ways 
or practices customary in a classical curriculum. 
We have already heard what he thought of history: 
a mass of " gossip" about dead people, containing 
nothing of greater interest than "tittle-tattle" 



HERBERT SPENCER 55 

about living people. Geography he called a "dead 
thing." He will not hear of learning lessons by- 
heart, and Rousseau would have rejoiced at the 
attack which his successor makes against books. 
"We forget," says Mr. Spencer, "that the function 
of books is merely ' supplementary ' ; that they are 
only an indirect means of gaining knowledge, and 
that we should resort to them only when direct 
means fail us. To read," said he again, "is to see 
by proxy;" it is better to see for oneself, and to 
observe life and nature with one's own eyes than 
through the eyes and ideas of other people. A 
pupil will open a book only "when his acquaintance 
with the objects and processes of the household and 
the fields is becoming tolerably exhaustive. . . ." 
It is, however, when he opposes the study of 
languages that Mr. Spencer makes use of the sharp- 
est weapons of his caustic criticism. Note that he 
is no more favourable to living than to dead lan- 
guages. He sees in the continuance of Latin and 
Greek merely an effect of custom and irreflective 
imitation. Men dress their children's minds as they 
do their bodies, in the prevailing fashion. As the 
Orinoco Indian — an authority frequently cited 
by Mr. Spencer — puts on paint before leaving his 
hut, not with a view to any direct benefit, but be- 
cause he would be ashamed to appear without it, 



56 HERBERT SPENCER 

so a boy's drilling in Latin and Greek is insisted upon, 
not because of their intrinsic value, but that he may 
not be disgraced by being found ignorant of them; 
that he may have the education of a gentleman. 
In this bantering vein he adds, "We are guilty of 
something like a platitude when we say that through- 
out his after career, a boy, in nine cases out of ten, 
applies his Latin and Greek to no practical purpose ; 
... if he occasionally vents a Latin quotation or 
alludes to a Greek myth, it is less to throw light on 
the topic in hand than for the sake of effect." 

It is impossible to banish Latinism and Hellenism 
more summarily. Moreover, in the eyes of certain 
utilitarian positivists, the whole of literature is held 
of little value, and regarded with suspicion. Con- 
dor cet, their forerunner, wrote : " Were a hundred 
men of mediocre ability to write verse and culti- 
vate literature and languages, nothing would be 
gained; but if twenty were to occupy themselves 
in observing and experimenting, their work would 
be actually useful." It is in the same way that 
Mr. Spencer is vexed that we neglect science and 
waste time in reading poetry and romances. He 
admits literature only for the sake of the pleasure 
it may afford. It is a mere amusement, and possibly 
he would sacrifice it altogether, were he not arrested 
by the pleasant idea that, without literary studies, 



HERBERT SPENCER 57 

conversation, lacking nourishment, would grow 
poor and feeble, and writers would not know where 
to look for metaphors. 

This is not the place to reply to these unfair 
exaggerations. Let us only say that Mr. Spencer 
did not convince his own countrymen, seeing that 
J. S. Mill gave utterance a few years afterwards to 
the admirable defence of classical literature already 
mentioned. In America, Teachers' Meetings have 
ventured to assert that " Latin is the crown of 
secondary education." Mr. G. R. Carpenter, in his 
book on The teaching of the Mother Tongue, acknow- 
ledges that the cause for which he pleads — classic 
studies — is practically gained, since the number of 
students taking Latin is steadily increasing. The 
chief error in Mr. Spencer's statement — and this 
should be specially noted — lies in believing that 
there is only one kind of really useful knowledge. 
In the competition of the various studies where he 
is president, he is wrong in desiring to award a 
prize to only one. A prize is merited by more than 
one, and those authorities are mistaken also who 
ascribe to literature that exclusive kind of superi- 
ority granted by our author to science. It is a 
mistake analogous to thinking that there is only 
one form of secondary instruction. The fact is 
that there are several; and the future will demand 



58 HERBERT SPENCER 

various courses of study and curricula which com- 
bine literature and science in varying proportions, 
for the same reason that social life in the future 
will grow in complexity, and professions and trades 
become more and more specialized. 

We should have liked to see in Education a new 
plan, with exact detailed explanations, follow these 
sharp criticisms of the old curricula. It is no diffi- 
cult matter to assert that science is the only firm 
basis for instruction; we want to be told also in 
what order the various sciences should be arranged 
and classed; how scientific studies should be 
adapted to the stages of child growth. . . . Mr. 
A. Bertrand, the translator of Education, and the 
most authentic disciple of its educational theory, 
has attempted to plan such a programme in his 
" Four Years' Lyc6e Course.' ' I do not say that this 
course is satisfactory, but he deserves credit for 
the attempt. As to Mr. Spencer, we must be content 
with general statements. He has not formulated 
the directions for class room which we desire; but 
he has at least endeavoured to define certain new 
methods which ought to control its organization. 

We have at last emerged from the period of intel- 
lectual inertia, when the rule of tradition was un- 
disputed. That was an age of " Unanimity in 
ignorance"; and while waiting until the happy 



HERBERT SPENCER 59 

days arrive of " unanimity in wisdom," we are 
living through a period disturbed by discussions, 
of " disagreement in research/ ' Already, how- 
ever, although there can be as yet no question of 
establishing an exact science of pedagogy (this will 
be possible only when a rational psychology has 
been constructed), a certain number of new tendencies 
have happily checked the old routine. Three cen- 
turies after Montaigne said, "To know by heart is 
not to know at all." We begin to understand it. We 
are giving heed to Rousseau's dictum — quoted 
by Mr. Spencer as a common saying — that one 
of the secrets of education is "to know how to waste 
time." Abstractions are giving way to concrete 
intuitions, symbols to realities. It would appear 
that in England, as elsewhere, this movement in 
the direction of reform began in primary schools. 
New life was given to instruction that was almost 
exclusively oral by direct observation of nature 
in the training college for teachers of elementary 
schools at Rattersea from the year 1850. 

Back to nature is, in fact, the distinctive feature 
of all the new methods, and in this matter, whatever 
Mr. Spencer may imagine, the initiator was Rous- 
seau. For the rest, what does it matter if the ap- 
peal is to Nature or to science ? Are they not much 
the same? What is science? Is it not nature 



60 HERBERT SPENCER 

transmuted into "thought," the universe trans- 
formed into knowledge, nature examined, compre- 
hended, and then reflected as a whole in the mirror 
of the mind? 

It is by following the natural laws prescribed by- 
nature for the development of intelligence that we 
may hope to discover the principles of intellectual 
education, education being only "the objective cor- 
relative of the subjective development of human 
nature." Hence Mr. Spencer has attempted to 
lay down what he calls — and this is a favourite 
expression of his — the "principles" of mental 
pedagogy. He distinguishes as many as seven prin- 
ciples, but in reality some of them do double duty, 
for his wealth of analysis is somewhat wasted. In 
this way he affirms that the teacher, in course of 
instruction, like the mind in moving naturally, 
should pass (1) from the simple to the complex; 
(2) from the indefinite to the definite ; (3) from the 
concrete to the abstract; (4) from the empirical 
to the rational. Is not this, to express one and the 
same idea in four different ways, a varied inter- 
pretation of the great law of evolution, — the law 
of movement from the homogeneous to the heteroge- 
neous ? In reality all this amounts to saying what 
no one calls in question, — Rousseau had previously 
expressed it in glowing language, — that simple, con- 



HERBERT SPENCER 61 

crete knowledge derived through sense experience 
ought to take precedence before abstract and rational 
knowledge. Into the interpretation of this truth 
— first proclaimed by Rousseau and applied by 
Pestalozzi — Mr. Spencer lets slip some mistakes. 
For example, can we admit that it is impossible, 
and indeed undesirable, to cause exact ideas to enter 
the child's mind under the pretext that the mind 
proceeds from the indefinite to the definite? On 
the contrary, it is never too early to build up clear 
and exact notions; and this is also not impossible 
provided care is taken to keep the attention of the 
child fixed sufficiently long on subjects within the 
range of his understanding. 

Another principle also heard of before, — Mr. 
Spencer makes the acknowledgment to Auguste 
Comte for having first enunciated it, — is that the 
education of the child should be in harmony with 
the historical development of the race, and should 
follow the progress of civilization; in other words, 
the development of the individual, from the point of 
view of the acquisition of knowledge, should be the 
same as the development of the race. Mr. Spencer 
gives as reason for this that, by virtue of the prin- 
ciple of heredity, there must be in the child a dis- 
position to reproduce in brief the history of the race. 
We doubt whether much practical benefit is to be 



62 HERBERT SPENCER 

awaited from this theory, a doctrine more ambitious 
than sound. Moreover, Mr. Spencer exaggerates the 
influence of heredity ; he states, for instance, that a 
child of French extraction will remain French, al- 
though educated abroad, despite the evidence prov- 
ing the contrary, that the influence of environment 
rapidly stifles the hereditary tendencies of nationali- 
ties and races. 

His two last principles, inferences from those 
preceding, are important in a different way: the 
principle declaring that spontaneous mental activ- 
ity should be encouraged as far as is possible, and, 
lastly, that the fitness of a study — and also its util- 
ity — can be measured by its attractiveness to the 
child. 

No objection can be raised when, like Rous- 
seau and Horace Mann, Mr. Spencer requires the 
load of formal lessons to be eased. It is a fallacy, 
of the age, he said, to educate entirely through 
" lessons. " We must instruct as little, and make the 
child " discover" as much, as possible. He must 
be his own instructor, not an inert recipient on 
whom knowledge is poured; an active seeker, who 
discovers by observation. These counsels are ex- 
cellent, provided we do not place too great depend- 
ence on them. We must not expect a child to 
"invent geometry," as Mr. Spencer suggests and 



HERBERT SPENCER 63 

Pestalozzi also desired. Pascals are rare in the 
world, and few could follow in the steps of Euclid. 
The law bearing on interesting instruction is the 
most original, but it must be accepted with reserve. 
It is not a question of imitating teachers who are 
as kindly as they are unwise; and who, in trying 
to make all instruction easy and amusing, render 
it childish. Nor is it by indirect instruction, after 
the manner of Fenelon, by fiction and fable, in which 
the hard features of didactic instruction are con- 
cealed under pleasant artifices; the interest must 
be sought in the studies themselves ; it must be in- 
trinsic and stimulating to the child's nature. The 
child himself will find it, provided it is adapted to his 
age and powers. Do you wish to know whether your 
plan of instruction is good? Examine the amount 
of combined curiosity and pleasure that it excites in 
the child. The awakened curiosity and inclination 
bear witness that the mind of the child is ripe for 
the subject. On the other hand, repugnance shown 
for a science proves either that it has been given to 
the child too soon, or by an objectionable method. 
Let it not be forgotten that the pleasure accom- 
panying an act stimulates its performance; that is 
why it is good to make instruction attractive. It 
is no more true in school than in life that the more 
one suffers the better one is for it. Intellectual 



64 HERBERT SPENCER 

activity is only truly useful and fertile when it is 
agreeable. Mr. Spencer, however, readily acknow- 
ledges that certain of our faculties do not always 
proceed to carry out necessary activities spontane- 
ously and of their own accord. It is not always 
correct that the child's instinct is surer than the 
reason of the adult. Reason is sometimes compelled 
to impose tasks on a child which its idle tendencies 
dislike. Therefore, if a child is to study all that it 
ought to learn, painful efforts must be demanded. 
Interest does not suffice as sole intellectual induce- 
ment. Study, like life, is made up of pleasure and 
pain commingled. We may add that it might be 
a dangerous test for the scheme of education dreamt 
of by Mr. Spencer to trust its application to the 
verdict of the inclinations of children. Is it not 
possible that, if they were allowed free choice, the 
greater number would be led away by the delights of 
history and literature stories, and prefer these to 
the severer charms of scientific information? 

It is true that our author expects to reduce the 
severity of science remarkably by presenting it 
under the pleasing and familiar aspect of object 
lessons. Object lessons, — that is evidently the 
method most directly associated with a system 
which demands that things be put before words, 
the acquisition of a language before the study of its 
grammar, observation before reasoning, and also 



HERBERT SPENCER 65 

pleasure before effort. This way of instruction is 
wonderfully fitted to the nature of children, who 
observe everything so inquisitively. " Watch the 
elder children coming into the room, exclaiming: 
' Mamma, see what a curious thing ! ' ' Mamma, look 
at this ! ' ' Mamma, look at that ! ' a habit they would 
continue did not the silly mamma tell them not to 
tease her." Mr. Spencer says this habit should be 
preserved by teachers. He urges that the object- 
lesson method be extended over a wider range of 
subjects, and the use of it continued longer; that 
it is not a system arranged solely to prepare for 
sense training, that it is valuable even as introduc- 
tion to abstract science. He believes, for instance, 
that geometry could be taught without definitions 
simply by causing objects to be measured. Rous- 
seau ventured similar innovations. 

On another point the descent of ideas from Rous- 
seau to Spencer is not less evident. Emile learnt 
to draw; so does Mr. Spencer's pupil. Drawing 
becomes an essential element in education, the rival 
and even the equal of writing, and in a sense more 
useful. Children have a natural taste for it, either 
for the drawing itself or else for colouring. Mr. 
Spencer thinks the mode of representing objects 
preferred by the young artist of five or six years is 
by means of colour, that he only accepts the pencil 
when he cannot get a brush and box of colours. 



66 HERBERT SPENCER 

A box of colours and a brush are the instruments 
preferred. . . . Mr. James Sully, in his Studies of 
Children, contradicts Mr. Spencer on this point, and 
asserts that, according to his personal observations, 
drawing is practice before colouring. 

To these reflections on drawing and object lessons 
are added some remarks on the teaching of geom- 
etry, on the value of physical science, on the part 
played by intuition and by experience in instruc- 
tion in the elements of mathematics, — even the 
multiplication table should be acquired experimen- 
tally, — then the chapter on intellectual education 
is brought all too quickly to an end. 

Despite its brevity, it is permeated with a profound 
feeling for the importance of early education, the 
only period that the author wished to examine, 
and which he, like Pestalozzi, would begin from 
the cradle. " Whoever has watched with any 
discernment the wide-eyed gaze of the infant at 
surrounding objects, knows very well that education 
does begin thus early, whether we intend it or not; 
and that these fingerings and suckings of everything 
it can lay hold of, these open-mouthed listenings 
to every sound, are first steps in the series which 
ends in the discovery of unseen planets, the inven- 
tion of calculating engines, the production of great 
paintings, or the composition of symphonies and 
operas." 



IV 

There is no need to call the attention of English 
people to the delights of physical exercises; if any- 
thing, they take too much interest in outdoor sports. 
M. Boutmy mentions in a recent book, called Essai 
oVune psychologie politique du peuple Anglais, a small 
thing which signifies much : "In the big daily papers 
of England sometimes as much as 45 columns are 
given up to summarizing sports, and only 17 re- 
served for all other matters." The instinct for 
activity and movement lies very deep in the Anglo- 
Saxon race. To-day Great Britain and the United 
States are the classic lands of open-air games; in 
France we only follow them afar off. A school, the 
extraordinary name of which is given by Mr. 
Spencer as " Muscular Christians," could not pos- 
sibly have arisen amongst us. No Frenchman 
would have published such novels as those of the 
Rev. Charles Kingsley, novels in which virtuous 
and devout heroes unite the strength of biceps of 
an athlete and the muscles of a wrestler at fairs with 
the fervent piety of a mystic. This violent education 
of the body, a tradition belonging to the English 

67 



68 HERBERT SPENCER 

race, develops energy of character; but its first 
effect, naturally, is that of developing physical 
qualities. It is with good reason that M. Maurice de 
Fleury, a Frenchman, attributes partly to this the 
difference in build and manner of the two races : the 
Englishman tends to become tall and graceful; 
the Frenchman, short, thickset, and effeminate. 

This physical education is not simply a matter 
of gymnastics and of the games of adolescence. It, 
too, begins in the first years of life, and lasts through- 
out the whole of it. It presupposes suitable diet, 
clothing, and a whole system of hygienic regulations. 
Hence, as regards this subject, the practice usual 
in his own country was sufficiently satisfactory to 
Mr. Spencer. 

He contrasts with his usual force the care given 
to bringing up animals with the indifference and 
neglect manifested towards the art of educating 
children. To fatten prize pigs for agricultural shows, 
to train a horse to win the Derby, to feed the finest 
bulls, — these are important matters, most absorb- 
ing occupations. At the dinner table of a country 
squire, when the ladies have left the room, at the 
village inn, on market days, or, indeed, after church 
service, these are prominent topics of conver- 
sation, subjects about which everybody tries to 
acquire information, or at least to exhibit an interest. 



HERBERT SPENCER 69 

The kinds of fodder, the nutritive qualities of hay 
and chopped straw, different manures, — all this is 
discussed and studied energetically. But who 
dreams, I would ask, of making inquiries about the 
different foods suitable for children, the period it is 
prudent to allow between meals and study hours? 
A country gentleman visits his stables, and cow- 
houses regularly; when does he find time to go up 
to the nurseries, inspect how they are ventilated, 
and the food which is given to his children? 

Locke and Rousseau had already set a good ex- 
ample of minute attention to details in regard to 
hygiene during infancy. But what in their case 
was merely a kind of vague intuition, of instinctive 
divination, developed under Mr. Spencer into very 
exact rules, founded on careful scientific investigation. 
He says that the business of looking after these 
matters should no longer be left to " mammas who 
have been taught little, — languages, music, and ac- 
complishments, — aided by nurses full of antiquated 
prejudices/' He desires that all parents learn enough 
physiology to be able to watch over the health of 
their growing children. " It is time that the benefits 
which our sheep and oxen are deriving from the 
investigations of the laboratory should be partici- 
pated in by our children.' ' 

As Emerson, the American whom Mr. Spencer 



70 HERBERT SPENCER 

quotes, has said, "The first requisite for success 
in life is to be a good animal." To become a good 
animal, you must accept as guide and counsellor 
Nature, and science, its interpreter. "If you will 
let Nature follow its own path, merely furnishing it 
with the materials needed for bodily growth as well 
as for growth of the mind, it will know how to in- 
sure harmonious development in the human being 
unaided/ ' 

To Mr. Spencer the question of nourishment is 
of most importance. He returns to it several times, 
and even discusses it in his book on Principles of 
Morality. In his wide and full conception of human 
duties, all actions which affect the well-being of a man, 
directly or indirectly, spring from one source, moral- 
ity. It is wrong, a physical sin, to eat too little, to in- 
flict privations on oneself, to prolong labour to the 
point of exhaustion, quite as much as to be idle or in- 
temperate. It is morally virtuous to attend to clean- 
liness, the care of one's health, to an alternation 
of work and rest, to sleep long enough, and to eat 
substantial and healthy meals, just as much as it is 
to practise sincerity, honesty, generosity, and all the 
duties most sanctioned in the ancient moral code. 

In food, two things must be considered : quantity 
and quality. In regard to the former, human beings 
in reaction against one kind of excess pass, according 



HERBERT SPENCER 71 

to the law of opposites, to its contrary; from des- 
potism to license and anarchy, from extreme piety 
to scepticism. A corresponding contrast may be 
noted in our dining customs. Our parents ate and 
drank freely; nowadays it is temperance that is 
fashionable. Formerly, especially in the rural dis- 
tricts, children were allowed to gorge themselves; 
the tendency is rather, at present, to give them too 
little nourishment. Now, eating too much or too 
little are both kinds of excess, of evil, and the latter 
is the worse. 

Food should above all be abundant. Let a child 
eat until he is satisfied. Appetite is a sure guide in 
the case of babies, and also in the case of adults 
who lead regular lives; sick persons and even ani- 
mals may follow it without injury. How can par- 
ents who know nothing whatever about the laws of 
nutrition be so foolish as to claim to decide for Nature 
and to make arbitrary rules for the needs of their 
child's stomach? Just as in the state there are 
"too many laws," — that is the title of one of Mr. 
Spencer's Political Essays, — so in the family there 
are too many restrictions and forbidden things. 

But, some one will say, there is proof that it is 
dangerous to supply all the demands of a child's 
appetite, for children indulge in such gluttonous 
feasts sometimes that they make themselves ill. 



72 HERBERT SPENCER 

In the first place, are such excesses as frequent as 
people are apt to say? The child does not gor- 
mandise by nature; the habit is acquired. Mr. 
Spencer quotes from an English publication, The 
Encyclopcedia of Practical Medicine, a statement 
which might have been written by Rousseau: "To 
eat too much is a vice of adults rather than of chil- 
dren : the latter are rarely gluttonous or epicurean, 
and they become so only by the fault of their par- 
ents." Moreover, as Mr. Spencer ingeniously ex- 
plains, the feasting of a child indulging to repletion in 
fruits and sweetmeats is merely Nature's way of taking 
a sensual revenge against a regimen that is too ascetic. 
When a child is fed too sparingly, and fed on insipid 
food, — bread and milk, butter and tea, — when the 
things he likes are forbidden him, is it astonishing 
that, having been denied a diet which supplies agree- 
able sensations, the day that he is let loose in a con- 
fectioner's shop he is tempted beyond measure, and 
he reacts too violently against the privations of his 
long Lent by breaking out into an impromptu car- 
nival ? 

Mr. Spencer is not the man to encourage fasting 
and abstinence. He believes in the superiority of 
men and races who are well nourished, forgetting 
that there are some weaklings who have also made 
their way in the world. Feuerbach said, "A man 



HERBERT SPENCER 73 

is what he eats." Mr. Spencer almost repeats this: 
"The well-fed races have been the energetic and 
dominant races." He calls attention to the fact 
that English sailors, men fed on meat, are stronger 
than the sailors of other nations who are fed on starch 
foods. M. Maurice de Fleury likewise asserts that 
the French diet makes more fat than muscle, and 
hence tends to form a race of office-holders ! . . . 
To modify every day the menus of the meals served 
to pupils of the lycees, increasing considerably the 
proportion of meat, would this suffice to transform 
character and inspire us rapidly with a taste for 
adventure and for bold enterprises? To do this 
would certainly be easier than to seek laboriously to 
reform our curricula and methods of teaching. . . . 

Sound and sufficient feeding is most necessary for 
the child. In the first place, the child by constant 
movement uses up its vital tissues, and expends heat 
much more rapidly than the adult. Besides this, it 
is developing every day; bit by bit it is building 
up its bodily structure; whereas the adult, having 
reached the limit of his growth, has only to preserve 
what he has constructed. The child, then, must 
by excess of nutrition make up for a greater ex- 
penditure of force, and also supply material for 
growth. 

Mr. Spencer would not forbid the child meat, 



74 HERBERT SPENCER 

"the food which is the best restorer"; he forbids 
meat only to very little children, those without 
either teeth or the muscular strength necessary for 
chewing. After three years of age, flesh food is 
good, and the contrary opinion has spread amongst 
rich people as a fashion, and amongst the poor from 
motives of economy. For the rest there can be no 
absolute rule in such a matter; children may be- 
come very strong on a diet that is almost exclusively 
vegetable, as is well shown by our little French 
peasants. Mr. Spencer himself did not flourish well 
the six months during which he turned vegetarian. 
He declares that at the end of this experiment he 
experienced much falling off in physical and moral 
strength. As a general rule, meat is to be preferred 
to bread, because it is more nourishing; and, for 
the same reason, bread is to be preferred to potatoes. 
As to the quantity of meat, that will vary according 
to circumstances, nutrition being modified by cli- 
mate, by the exercise taken, with the hygrometric 
state of the air, and the electricity contained in the 
atmosphere. "In English colleges," says M. de 
Fleury, "300 grams of roast meat are allowed to 
each child daily"; that would be too much for 
French children. 

Mr. Spencers notion that the taste for sweet- 
meats should not be repressed is original. Sugar, 



HERBERT SPENCER 75 

a great heat producer, plays an important part in 
the development of the body ; hence, in the craving 
for sugar manifested by children, we must recognize 
a legitimate call of nature claiming what it needs. 
Many physicians hold the contrary opinion, and pro- 
scribe sweetmeats, " which spoil the teeth." Mr. 
Spencer is also in contradiction with most experts 
in hygiene; they forbid usually all unripe things, 
whereas he recommends that we humour the taste 
of children for fruit, even for half-ripe fruit. Green 
gooseberries, the sourest apples, and all acid vege- 
tables are excellent tonics. 

Yet another problem is that of variety of nourish- 
ment. It is foolish to force children to eat always 
the same things, like English soldiers who are con- 
demned in barracks to twenty years of boiled beef. 
It is forgotten that monotony breeds disgust, and 
new dishes, on the contrary, produce an agreeable 
sensation which arouses an appetite. Moreover, 
there is no single food which contains all the nu- 
tritive elements necessary for health. One feels 
a shadow of regret that Mr. Spencer did not under- 
stand that the same is true of mental food, and that 
neither science nor literature alone can furnish all 
that is required for a completely perfect intellectual 
education. 

Let us pass to another subject, — clothing. Mr. 



76 HERBERT SPENCER 

Spencer continues to attack asceticism, that is to 
say, customs which are too austere, which are not 
adjusted to the nature or feelings of the child. 
Feelings of warmth and cold should determine the 
choice of its costume. A kind of " physical con- 
science" warns us of the danger to which we are 
exposed by injurious sensations. People who trans- 
gress its laws no doubt scar its edge, but in childhood 
it is instinctive and infallible, and it demands 
warm clothing in winter and cool clothing in summer. 
It is folly to seek to harden the body against sensa- 
tions that presage a freezing temperature. "Not 
a few children are hardened out of the world." 
Cold arrests the growth of men as well as plant growth. 
The human race in cold climates — the Esquimaux 
and Laplanders — are small and stunted, like the 
sheep on the Scotch mountains and the ponies 
of the Shetland Isles. The younger the child the 
more necessary is warmth. We imagined that we 
were imitating the English and courting their ad- 
miration in letting infants go about in all weathers 
with bare legs, bare arms, and necks. Let us not 
deceive ourselves; Mr. Spencer, who strongly con- 
demns these half-clothed fashions, tells us that it is 
the French who are the guilty people, and he blames 
them accordingly. It was already very regret- 
table, he says, that English ladies were led by the 



HERBERT SPENCER 77 

capricious tastes of Parisians and were weak enough 
to follow in their dress all the follies of fashions 
invented on the Continent. But it is monstrous 
that under the same inspiration they now dress 
their little ones like " mountebanks." It is good to 
be set right ; we must no longer lay the responsibility 
for this folly on England, and, as most French doc- 
tors disapprove of this fashion of light clothing, I 
think it is strongly compromised: "I have consulted 
a great number of hygienists," writes M. de Fleury; 
"almost all are opposed to the custom of bare legs: 
they impute to it colds and bronchitis, and they 
accuse it of injuring the nutrition of the body by 
causing excessive activity. " Mr. Spencer is not the 
only chilly scientist who would have children well 
covered up. A certain Dr. Combe, 1 whom he often 
quotes, would have all clothing thick enough to 
protect the body " against every chance sensation of 
cold, however slight " ; Mr. Spencer says, more wisely, 
" against every abiding sensation." He finishes by 
recommending coarse woollen stuff, cloth strong 
enough to endure wear and tear, preferably of a 
dull gray colour, such as will not suffer from use and 
exposure in childish sports. 
The education of the child is defective, then, in 

1 Dr. Combe, A Treatise of the Physiological and Moral Manage- 
ment of Infancy, London, 1854. 



78 HERBERT SPENCER 

the matter of food and clothing; it is at present 
also defective in physical exercise, at any rate the 
education of girls. Even in England, it would 
seem, the weaker sex, or, as Mr. Spencer expresses 
it, "the gentler sex," are forbidden by public preju- 
dice the practice of those bodily exercises which 
this sex, nevertheless, particularly needs, either as 
remedy for natural delicacy, or to fit them to bear 
the burdens of maternity without inconvenience. 
" Within view," Mr. Spencer says, "we have an 
establishment for young ladies. . . . During five 
months we have not once had our attention drawn 
to the premises by a shout or a laugh. Occasionally 
girls may be observed sauntering along the paths 
with their lesson books in their hands or else walking 
arm in arm. Once, indeed, we saw one chase an- 
other round the garden; but with this exception, 
nothing like vigorous exercise has been visible. . . . 
We have a vague suspicion that rude health and 
abundant vigour are considered somewhat plebeian." 
Mr. Spencer made further inquiries and he became 
convinced that noisy play is discredited in institu- 
tions for young ladies, whereas it is wildly indulged 
in by the boys. He protests vehemently against 
these contradictions. If active sports do not hinder 
a boy from becoming a true gentleman, why should 
similar activity prevent a young girl from growing 



HERBERT SPENCER 79 

into an accomplished woman? However violent 
may be the games in the playground or playing field, 
why imagine that we shall ever see young ladies, 
when their school days are ended, amusing them- 
selves by turning somersaults in the streets, or by 
playing marbles in the drawing-room? A woman, 
like a man, should be strong and healthy ; she should 
not blush at a good appetite, although that may 
be, perhaps, vulgar, and she should take her share 
in physical exercises; then we should see no more 
of those pale, thin, angular, flat-chested persons 
who, according to Mr. Spencer, filled the drawing- 
rooms of London forty years ago. 

For the rest, what should these exercises consist 
of? In the first place, of free games. Gymnastics 
do not offer the same advantages; formal move- 
ments exercise certain parts of the body only; as 
regards quantity of muscular action they are in- 
ferior to games, and also in regard to quality. They 
resemble scholastic exercises too much; and in 
consequence they are not accompanied by that 
valuable stimulant " happiness, the most powerful 
of all tonics, delight in the activity itself." Gym- 
nastics, doubtless, are better than nothing, but 
they cannot replace free activities. Here, again, 
Nature is our master; and, as usual, Mr. Spencer 
invokes the occult power which rules over Nature 



80 HERBERT SPENCER 

and places physical activity under the protection of 
the wisdom attending " divine ordinations." 

Physical education has been necessary in every 
age. It is yet more important to-day, in an epoch 
when the conditions of life rarely grant us rest, and 
in a society condemned to intense, and often exces- 
sive, brain activity. On the one hand, the struggle 
for existence becomes every day more fierce and 
feverish. Formerly, war claimed thousands of vic- 
tims in a few hours; to-day, the battles of indus- 
try, by overstraining human activity, prepare, 
more slowly but as surely, hecatombs of weak and 
exhausted men. Also, whilst the strain of modern 
life becomes every day greater, we find that we have 
less strength to encounter it. In a race that is ageing, 
resisting power grows feeble. We are less healthy 
than our fathers ; and our children, unless we guard 
against it, will be still weaker than we. We are like 
bankers who, just at the time when they will have 
to make the heaviest payments, find that funds are 
very low in their coffers. Hence physical education 
appears to be the vital question, one which must 
be solved at any cost, if we are to arrest degeneracy 
in the race. It does not concern ourselves and the 
present time only; it concerns our children and the 
future. In our efforts to combat the evil we must 
not busy ourselves only with strengthening the 



HERBERT SPENCER 81 

constitution through exercise and attention to hy- 
gienic laws. We must, as far as is possible, get 
rid of causes which tend to enfeeblement, in one 
word, of overstrain, — overstrain of body and of 
mind both. 

No one has pointed out the fatal consequences of 
this twofold overstrain more emphatically than Mr. 
Spencer. During his visit to America, in 1882, 
when making a speech at a banquet in New York, 
he found the best means of thanking the Americans 
for their hospitality was to warn them, with coura- 
geous frankness, of defects in their hustling civili- 
zation and exhausting habits. He entreated them 
to neglect for a while the " Gospel of Labour" and 
cultivate the " Gospel of Repose." He said to them, 
"I have been struck during my visit by the number 
of tired faces, on which I could read, inscribed in 
deep wrinkles, traces of heavy burdens borne for 
long. . . . The hair turns white in your country 
ten years before it does in ours." An evolutionist, 
one who has accepted the doctrine of heredity in 
place of that of original sin, is naturally more alarmed 
and dismayed than the common philosopher can 
be by the thought of the future which the strain 
of modern activity is preparing for humanity. The 
first duty of a man is the care of the body, this not 
only out of regard for his own well-being, but also 



82 HERBERT SPENCER 

out of consideration for his descendants. The 
strength of our constitution is a possession granted 
us for temporary use only, which we should seek 
to transmit, if not increased, at least intact, to our 
children. To bequeath to them millions of dollars 
in return for ruined health, that will in no way 
balance the wrong that we shall have done them, 
if we bequeath also the defects and weaknesses of 
an exhausted body. 

In his attack on overstrain Mr. Spencer has spe- 
cially in view the abuse of school tasks. He urges 
that school life should not begin too early, on the 
pretext that, since rivalry for standing room in the 
world is growing keener, we must enter it earlier. 
He cites with approval a physiologist friend of his — 
a disciple of Rousseau, certainly — who said to him, 
"My son shall have no teaching until he is eight years 
old. ..." He does not desire erudition and scholar- 
ship, studies that can be stored in the brain like 
fat in a swollen body, but which do not tend towards 
mental vigour. He even goes so far as to say, he, 
the apostle of scientific education, that success in 
life depends less on knowledge than on energy and 
strength of will; and that in any case we should 
hold of most importance and acquire first practical 
knowledge, — the knowledge which forms, as it 
were, "mental muscle. " 



HERBERT SPENCER 83 

Mr. Spencer fears the consequences of overpress- 
ure (culture forcee), especially for women; inten- 
sive study carried to an excess may, in their case, 
cause irreparable injury. The higher instruction 
given to young English girls in certain English 
institutions — he mentions Girton and Newham Col- 
leges — is incompatible with good health, — health 
that expresses itself in good humour, gayety, and 
overflowing life. Mr. Spencer gives us to understand 
by suggestive words that " conjugal unhappiness" 
may arise from this early overstrain. For the sake 
of her own happiness, as well as that of her future 
home and family, the strength of a young girl should 
be guarded, and brain fatigue, leading to nerve 
exhaustion, prohibited. Here, again, Mr. Spencer 
shows himself a disciple of Rousseau; he is inclined 
to wish that women would be satisfied with their 
natural attractions. Men, he says, do not want 
erudition in women. What they want to find in a 
life companion is physical beauty, good nature, and 
sound sense." — "What man," he says at another 
time, "ever fell in love with a woman because she 
knew Italian or German? But rosy cheeks and 
laughing eyes are great attractions." 

It is true that physical overstrain is not less 
harmful than intellectual overstrain, and Mr. Spen- 
cer is no fanatic in regard to athletic games. Can 



84 HERBERT SPENCER 

one credit it? He condemns "football." Foot- 
ball has, however, survived his criticisms, violent 
though they were, since he attributed to it a "brutal- 
izing influence." He would permit only those games 
which demand a moderate amount of physical exer- 
tion. Brutal force in no way attracts his admiration ; 
it is well known that he was a passionate opponent 
of the military spirit and the savage practices that 
it sometimes engenders. He speaks hard words 
against Germany, the land where students as well 
as officers uphold duelling, and "where all the males 
are trained to be soldiers." He reflects upon France 
unjustly when he says that all the energy of the 
nation is concentrated in its teeth and in its claws. 
Had he foreseen in 1862 the events of 1900-1901, he 
might have reserved some of these bitter reproaches 
for his own country. . . . But I am at fault; he 
did do that. He did not forget the outrages that 
followed the conquests of the English colonies; 
he mentions, for instance, amongst others, the atroc- 
ities committed in India on the day when, having 
shot a whole band of Sepoys, Englishmen fired into 
the human pile in order to make a sure end of the 
unhappy sufferers who were still breathing. The 
present war could supply other illustrations for 
similar criticisms. . . . 

However intent, then, Mr. Spencer may be on 



HERBERT SPENCER 85 

the acquisition of physical virtues, strength of 
body and courage, he does not exalt them above 
measure. He thinks with reason that they will 
always be necessary, and especially necessary so 
long as one of the conditions of national life is mili- 
tarism. But he puts them in their proper place 
as inferior qualities, which should be subservient 
and subordinate to moral virtues and to the more 
elevated human attributes. It is not a consequence 
of Mr. Spencer's teaching that Lord Rosebery, in 
a recent discourse, charged English education with 
sacrificing the development of the mind to physical 
exercises. A too ardent pursuit of muscular force 
may disturb the right balance of the faculties. Just 
as the abuse of brain work exhausts the physical 
constitution generally, so excessive bodily toil 
weakens mental power. It is for this reason that 
mental inertia follows on too great physical exer- 
tion, and that a too rapid growth on the part of a 
child is accompanied by a kind of physical prostra- 
tion. The ideal is to maintain a wise equilibrium 
between two opposing activities. Let us remember 
that " Nature is a strict accountant; and if you 
demand of her in one direction more than she is 
prepared to lay out, she balances the account by 
making a deduction elsewhere." 



If, for the reasons mentioned, physical education 
becomes more than ever an absolute necessity when 
a race is old and enfeebled, for reasons of a different 
kind moral education is still yet more imperative; 
and at first Mr. Spencer appears to be fully aware of 
this. Disturbed by the decline of religious belief, 
anxious about the enfeeblement of the human con- 
science resulting from the diminution of faith in the 
supernatural, — and we cannot certainly depend on 
Mr. Spencer's writings to check this movement, — he 
affirms the need of letting the sciences now develop- 
ing take the place of the faith which is diminishing. 
Morality in its turn should become a science. For 
the supernatural moral code, the authority of which 
is disappearing, dead, or at least much weakened, we 
should make haste to substitute a natural moral code, 
which should borrow its strength and authority only 
from evidence supplied by its own demonstrations; 
only this alone is able to take the place of dogmas 
of sacred origin, the laws of which have governed 
believers for centuries. It would cause moral dis- 
aster, if science, having become master, did not suc- 

86 



HERBERT SPENCER 87 

ceed in gaining the command over the souls which 
are partly shaking off the bonds of a decaying 
religion. 

Yet, by a contradiction astonishing in a mind so 
systematic as Mr. Spencer's, the same philosopher, 
who swears by science alone, gives a striking proof 
of his own fallacy and overthrows the hopes with 
which he had inspired us, for he puts aside his con- 
fidence in science when it asserts a claim to moralize 
mankind, and will not admit its qualifications. He 
does not admit that knowledge can have a benefi- 
cial effect on the conduct and habits of men. He 
scoffs pitilessly at what he calls modern fanaticism, 
the " fanaticism of instruction." He is amused by 
the moralists who appeal to the statistics of crime 
to show that ignorance and crime are correlative, 
are connected the one with the other in a cause and 
effect relationship. One might as well try to main- 
tain (he says) that crime is caused by the neglect 
of frequent washing and dirty clothing, and that 
criminality is habitually accompanied by a dirty 
skin. What relation can there be between the art 
of naming the letters of the alphabet, or of tracing 
black signs on a sheet of white paper, and the power 
of acting rightly in life? Pure knowledge has no 
influence on the will. In a word, Mr. Spencer puts 
no faith in the curative and moralizing power of 



88 HERBERT SPENCER 

science. He predicts that events will more and 
more prove vain the hopes which present-day 
enthusiasm places in the diffusion of intellectual 
light. It is true that he does not go so far as some 
friends of ignorance, and assert that instruction is 
injurious and corrupting; but he believes it to be 
powerless and sterile as a moral instrument. Faith 
in reading and class books is an idol of the period. 
It is noteworthy that the English positivist towards 
the end of his life reached, like Auguste Comte, the 
point of proclaiming the sovereignty of feeling and 
the powerlessness of reason, saying, in fitting terms, 
"It is not ideas which overturn the world and rule 
it, it is feeling." 

Mr. Spencer affirms the practical inefficacy, not 
only of science generally, but also of direct moral 
instruction; this he considers fruitless. We think 
we can teach virtue by lessons! That is a de- 
lusion. The will does not obey a precept solely 
because the intelligence understands and believes 
it true. How many men are well instructed about 
duty, yet do not practise it? How many, even 
amongst the professors of ethics, do not in their lives 
conform to the excellent words that pass out of 
their lips? Mr. Spencer notes amongst his neigh- 
bours — and this would be an easy matter in any 
country — sad instances of intolerance and of deep 



HERBERT SPENCER 89 

wrongs on the part of Christian writers who spend 
their lives in preaching charity. Let us, then, aban- 
don the hope of giving moral education through the 
medium of instruction. Even ministers of religion 
do not flatter themselves that they succeed in this 
by religious preaching, conducted in churches and 
chapels where an impressive architecture, stained 
glass windows, pictures, and artistic decoration, 
hymns and music, with mysterious half lights, call 
the soul to meditation and retirement. How, then, 
can a lay institution expect to realize it by preaching 
morality in their bare and cold class rooms, where 
the children's eyes rest on geographical maps and 
lesson pictures of animals and of objects? 

If Mr. Spencer had restricted himself to pointing 
out insufficiency in the effect of moral instruction, we 
should have agreed with him gladly. A simple 
notion formed in the mind is one thing, the will to 
act another. In order to form a moral sense, we 
must appeal to other forces besides the intellect, 
even when this is most highly stored with knowledge 
and most fully enlightened by science. But if in- 
struction cannot do everything, it can do something. 
If it is not the sole inspirer of virtue, and certain 
of being obeyed, it is at least a counsellor, who at 
times makes itself heard. Instruction does not 
suffice to arouse the will into action, yet by enlighten- 



90 HERBERT SPENCER 

ing the mind it prepares it for action. Has nothing 
been done in aid of morality when prejudices, super- 
stition, and error have been uprooted? Has no 
guarantee against vice been given when its harmful 
effects have been explained? We are, above all, 
surprised that a utilitarian moralist, one who esti- 
mates the value of human actions by their results, 
according to their effect upon individual and social 
happiness, refuses to recognize the value, for in- 
stance, of pointing out the disastrous physical con- 
sequences which follow immoral acts ? That feeling 
prompts men to act, we admit ; but an enlightened 
intelligence acts, we maintain, upon feeling. Is it 
not good for warmth of heart that the brain be first 
illuminated? A good moral habit is acquired only 
by a frequent repetition of the same action. That 
also we admit; but to induce a child to repeat an 
action, it is not a waste of time to point out its 
utility and beauty. You desire that a young man 
should be temperate. Surely it will be of service 
to give him an insight into the dreadful ravages 
produced by the plague of alcoholism. You desire 
that he should be generous, kindly, and patriotic. 
Have men, then, in all ages erred who, desiring to 
preach virtue, have appealed to great examples, 
to heroes and sages in order to arouse emulation ? 
The opposition that Mr. Spencer has felt obliged 



HERBERT SPENCER 91 

to express against science as one of the means of 
moral progress is, then, as unfair as it is unexpected ; 
and he might be asked why, if he were right, should 
he himself exert such great efforts for the purpose 
of organizing scientific moral laws into a system? 
If a knowledge of rational theory is of no assistance 
in modifying and ameliorating practice, why form 
the theory? 

But to explain Mr. Spencer's attitude on the 
question of teaching ethics, it may be necessary to 
be acquainted with his view of moral habits in gen- 
eral. The ethics of the evolutionist resemble so 
little the ideas ordinarily held, that one could well 
believe it useless to include the subject as a part 
of school instruction; and hence the contradiction, 
the appearance of which has astonished us, may 
not, in fact, exist, being only a consequence of the 
author's system. 

Mr. Spencer's ethics are " hedonistic," a morality 
based on " pleasure," or rather on " utility"; it is 
a morality governed by interest, but interest under- 
stood in its highest sense. It is a morality the end 
of which is not a blind, impulsive pursuit of pleasure, 
but an intelligent planning for happiness, the happi- 
ness of others as well as our own. Happiness is 
the final end of life. We must dismiss the cruel 
moralists who deny us all pleasures. We must 



92 HERBERT SPENCER 

get rid of the idea of a diabolic Deity, whom ascetic 
men in former times thought to please when they 
lashed themselves and inflicted on themselves all 
sorts of privations and sacrifices. A desire for 
pleasure is at the bottom of all human efforts, even 
of those which issue in suffering voluntarily accepted. 
The new ideal should be happiness, the happiness 
of the world; and the evolution of all living things 
is moving insensibly towards this ideal. 

Full and complete " individuation" is the final 
end of evolution, yet it would appear as if Mr. 
Spencer's moral problem is less that of the individual, 
and of persons as such, than of the race. Humanity 
is enmeshed in the system of the universe. Morality 
is a " cosmic problem. " The moral law is an off- 
shoot of the law of evolution which governs every- 
thing. A continual selection is lifting beings from 
a nebulous uniformity and confused starting-points 
up towards an individualism, varied and harmonious. 
Just as out of a primitive nebulous condition have 
arisen innumerable distinct stars, so from a disor- 
dered mass of savage tribes have emerged the indi- 
viduals that compose civilized societies. If " indi- 
viduation' ' is at its lowest point in the inorganic 
world, it is at its highest amongst men. And this 
" individuation" is nothing else than the power to 
maintain existence, and at the same time to widen 



HERBERT SPENCER 93 

it and render it more complete. Complete, perfect, 
good, moral, — these are synonymous words. A day 
will arrive when the altruistic tendencies will be as 
strong in the human heart as now are the egoistic. 
Human morality grows gradually. For each in- 
dividual it is less the result of personal will than 
the inherited result of the actions of one's ancestors. 
Progress is a necessity. When progress shall have 
reached its last stage, and, in consequence, the in- 
dividual be completely adapted both to Nature 
and society, then " right conduct" will be the natu- 
ral conduct. Actions executed by men now with 
repugnance, and only because they seem obligatory, 
will be accomplished pleasantly and without effort ; 
and in the same way those that a man avoids at 
whatever cost from a feeling of duty, — from these 
he will refrain without any merit to himself, because 
they will be disagreeable to him. In the golden 
age at the end of the centuries man will become 
very much what animals now are, having fixed 
instincts; and he will accomplish mechanically 
what we call "the good." Thus Mr. Spencer leads 
humanity towards a sort of moral automatism, and 
there leaves it. It is a strange ideal, which, for the 
rest, need not disturb us much, for it is very far in 
the distance ; on certain sides it resembles, however 
peculiar that may be, the eternal blessedness prom- 



94 HERBERT SPENCER 

ised by the Church to those who have merited elec- 
tion by the Godhead. 

But while awaiting the coming of this terrestrial 
paradise, prepared for the children of evolution, what 
is the moral position of the men who live during 
the provisory stages which must be crossed by 
humanity? It is quite evident that the old moral 
notions have either disappeared or entirely changed 
their meaning. The word "duty" is nothing more 
than a word. It has no longer any moral sanction. 
The categorical imperative of Kant is a mere fiction. 

In its place the new philosophy proposes a kind 
of natural and subjective necessity, arising out of 
our nature. Our moral sense is the product of the 
experiences of utility, which the race has organized 
and consolidated through successive generations. 
An authority superior to our own will, imposing laws, 
commands, prohibitions, disappears; there is only 
a natural constraining force, springing from heredi- 
tary habits, revealing itself in what Mr. Spencer 
calls " moral intuitions,' 7 a kind of moral sense. 
Man ascends little by little from egoism to altruism. 
Generous feelings become part of his physical or- 
ganism. For the rest, they are only — as Rousseau 
suggested — personal sentiments aroused and trans- 
formed by sympathy. Thus the feeling of justice is 
merely a love of personal liberty, somehow widened 



HERBERT SPENCER 95 

and generalized by a sympathetic reflection on 
attacks made against the liberty of other people. 

Briefly stated, to live morally is, according to the 
ancient doctrine of the Stoics and Epicureans, "to 
live in harmony with Nature." If this is so, we can 
understand that Mr. Spencer need not concern 
himself about instruction in morality, since, on the 
one hand, it is not necessary to do so, and, on the 
other, Nature is becoming ever more and more per- 
fect, is sufficient in itself. 

Nevertheless, for it to be entirely sufficient in itself, 
it would be necessary to proclaim, as Rousseau did 
proclaim, that all a child's instincts are good and 
innocent; and this Mr. Spencer does not do. The 
doctrine of absolute optimism, called in England 
"Lord Palmerston's dogma," professed also by the 
poet Shelley, who said, "Man is good, society bad, 
and would mankind give up their old institutions 
and prejudices, all the evils of the world would at 
once disappear," — this dogma our philosopher in 
no way accepts, nor could he accept it without 
denying the doctrine of evolution and of a progres- 
sive perfection of humanity. Sometimes he ap- 
pears entirely of the opposite opinion, and ready 
to subscribe to the doctrine of natural perversity. 
The picture he draws of a child's character is not 
at all flattering; it reminds us of the wretched list 



96 HERBERT SPENCER 

of sins ascribed to children by Bruyere : " As a child's 
features resemble for a time those of the savage, so, 
too, do his instincts ; hence the tendencies to cruelty, 
to thieving, and lying so general amongst children." 
In this picture, limned in black, Mr. Spencer excludes 
even the delight and charm that lie in the rosy, smil- 
ing countenance of a tiny baby. He sees in it only 
a repulsive, ill-formed creature, the face of which re- 
calls in every feature that of primitive man : a flat 
nose, forward opening nostrils, large lips, etc. In 
morals the child is just as imperfect. " He is a prey 
to bad impulses. The barbaric race from which 
he is descended relives in him." What an admis- 
sion for an evolutionist, since, instead of the progress 
he had proclaimed, and which time ought already 
to have established, he finds in the children of to- 
day a survival of the savagery of the first ages! 
From this affirmation of the sad effects of heredity 
should we not be more convinced than ever of the 
necessity of education and, in particular, of moral 
education ? 

It is true that Mr. Spencer does not hold to his 
first judgment on the nature of children, which was 
entirely condemnatory. His final conclusion is 
that their feelings are neither entirely good nor 
entirely bad. Estimating both the for and against, 
he practically says, "I have not a good enough 



HERBERT SPENCER 97 

opinion of Nature to think it capable of going straight 
without watching, nor one bad enough to say with 
the pessimists that the heart of man is deceitful 
above all things and desperately wicked.' ' But 
this conclusion, however softened, still leaves in 
some degree the contradiction which we have noted. 
For if any human tendencies are bad and depraved, 
must we not use some kind of instruction with a 
view of forming feelings and a will which will oppose 
and correct these perverse instincts ? If, perchance, 
science proves powerless to accomplish this task, 
what is there left but to appeal anew to religious 
instruction ? 

But, admitting what is not the fact, that instruc- 
tion can do nothing to develop moral strength, how 
can we forget that education comprises other things 
than arousing ideas and feelings which will incline 
us to do what is right ; that it ought to decide exactly 
the deeds which are in harmony with morality, in 
whatever way defined? Moral teaching gives un- 
deniable proof of its value at this juncture. And 
we may add that it is specially the duty of utili- 
tarians, those who weaken or suppress the old ideas 
of duty and obligation, and have need of a moral 
code in a different way from the old school, to ex- 
plain how we shall distinguish what is useful from 
what is not useful, good from evil, as they under- 



98 HERBERT SPENCER 

stand it. In fact, in traditional morality it was 
possible to maintain that reflection and reason were 
almost useless. Then a law, sovereign and indis- 
putable, distinguishing good from evil in themselves, 
addressed its commands to docile consciences. An 
absolute duty was imposed, and there remained 
only to obey, without discussion. How much 
more necessary is the aid of science in a moral- 
ity based on interest! How much confusion 
may arise between vague and definite interests; 
what a delicate matter to discern one's duty, when 
the said duty consists in finding out the actions 
which are in harmony with utility ! It is only from 
an exact knowledge of the laws of life and social 
conditions that we can deduce the modes of conduct 
which, in the nature of things, tend to promote in- 
dividual and social happiness. As J. S. Mill forcibly 
said, "The salvation of utilitarianism will be 
education.' ' It is, in fact, education which alone 
can prevent a race governed *by interest from 
going to wreck and ruin through selfishness and 
immorality. 

But Mr. Spencer does not appear to have been 
conscious of the very great difficulties involved in 
utilitarian morality. Moral education, as presented 
by him, is a brief topic ; it is included almost in one 
chapter, that on discipline. Moreover, discipline 



HERBERT SPENCER 99 

is of one kind only, — repressive, — a discipline of 
punishments. 

Here, again, Nature and utility are the guides of 
the author of Education. His system of discipline, — 
the discipline of natural reactions, — what might be 
called a discipline of consequences or of effects, con- 
sists, in fact, in putting a child face to face with Na- 
ture, and letting it find its punishment in a diminution 
of its comfort. In reality, it is Rousseau's theory 
amplified, systematized, and extended to cover the 
whole of life. A child falls ; the pain caused by the 
fall warns him to be careful in his movements. If 
he should burn his hand in the flame of a candle, or 
on the hot bar of a grate, he will have learnt to beware 
of fire. It is this natural relationship, one which 
unites certain consequences with every action, that 
we must use to direct the conduct of a child. It is 
easy to discover defects and fallacies in a discipline 
of this nature. 

A little girl, one of the " tiresome little creatures" 
who puts the house in disorder, who dreams and 
loiters, is not ready at the appointed time to go for 
a walk. To punish her, we say that she is to lose her 
walk; Mr. Spencer asserts that the next time she 
will be ready at the right hour. Is he quite sure of 
this? In this somewhat imaginary world of docile 
and pliant children pictured by his optimism, the 



100 HERBERT SPENCER 

erring child yields to the first summons of Nature ; 
merely the idea of the privation that will be inflicted 
on him, and of which he has had only one experience, 
makes him reform. We are afraid that in the real 
world there are stubborn and indocile characters 
whom it will not prove as easy to convert and 
restore to order. Another illustration: a boy 
refuses to put his playthings back in their places. 
To correct him, the only thing to be done is to take 
away his box of playthings. First, notice that here, 
as before, it is not Nature which is the reagent, it is 
the parents who intervene either to oblige the child 
to stay at home, or to deprive him of his playthings. 
But, more than that, who guarantees that the dis- 
orderly boy will so quickly repent? May we not 
suppose that sometimes he will persist in his dis- 
orderly habits, if we do not employ other means to 
correct them? It is much to be feared that this 
discipline of results would not give what is awaited 
from it; and we may conclude already that its 
efficacy would be very far from certain. 

But yet another difficulty : whatever Mr. Spencer 
says about its strict justice, this natural form of 
discipline is not proportionate in the punishments 
that it inflicts, either to the physical strength of 
the wrong-doer, or to the character and gravity 
of the transgression. Emile has broken the panes 



HERBERT SPENCER 101 

of a window, and a serious cold teaches him not to 
do this again. Good! But this cold may turn 
to inflammation of the lungs, if the child is delicate, 
and the punishment becomes so heavy that it kills 
the child. Would you expose to the strokes of 
blind Nature — for, whatever Mr. Spencer may say 
about the matter, Nature is often blind to decrees 
unchangeable and inexorable — creatures without 
distinction, whose power of resistance is so variable ? 
A strong child can bear without injury chills which 
would benumb a child with delicate lungs to the 
verge of death, just as shrubs resist frosty days 
which cause fragile plants to wither and die. 
Nature, less intelligent and kindly than Mr. Spencer 
would believe, does not, in its pitiless reactions, take 
into account at all the infinite diversities and va- 
riations of temperament in mankind. It does not 
weigh in its balance the age and the physical strength 
or weakness of its dependents. Therefore, we may 
again conclude that the discipline of natural reactions 
is bad — bad because hard, unjust, and cruel to 
the weak. 

Yet again, from another point of view, it is unjust ; 
it does not attend to the moral quality of actions. 
Whether a fault has been committed by imprudence, 
by stupidity, or, on the other hand, with bad in- 
tention, in all these cases the same sentence may 



102 HERBERT SPENCER 

be awarded. In its unconscious and fatal repression, 
Nature chastises alike the innocent breaking of its 
laws and voluntary disobedience. It ignores the 
motives of the actions which it represses. A poor 
child who, by carelessness or even by excessive zeal, 
sets fire to its bed while working at night, will be 
burnt alive just as much as the wretch who sets 
fire to his house criminally. A child running, who, 
through imprudence, slips on a stone, may break 
his leg just as much as the little glutton who falls 
from the top of a ladder up which he has climbed 
to reach some forbidden dainties. Nature is not 
always the good and kindly power dreamt of by 
evolutionists. Man, and still more the child, must 
be protected against its severities. It is a question 
whether humanity would succeed in maintaining life 
under a rule of natural reactions. As J. S. Mill has 
said, "The law of gravitation, to mention no other, 
is the cruellest of all laws ; it breaks the neck of the 
best and most amiable man mercilessly ! " 

When the conditions of a reaction chance to make 
its justice exactly balance the deed, the punish- 
ment often falls too slowly to benefit the culprit. 
Frequently it is nothing more than an act of revenge, 
or of platonic vengeance, so to speak, on the part 
of Nature, which reacts too late, after the bad habit 
has taken root and the evil become irreparable. 



HERBERT SPENCER 103 

A scholar is idle; a time will certainly come in his 
life when he will suffer from this sin of his youth; 
he is preparing himself to fail in his future career; 
but when will he reckon up the mischievous conse- 
quences of his negligence? Only when the time 
for remedying them has passed. Nature has no 
immediate reactions for faults of this kind. At 
present, idleness gives to the truant only the sweets 
of revery. The loss of a lesson puts him into a good 
temper. Moreover, this slow-footed justice is not 
infallible; Nature, too, makes errors of judgment. 
A scholar who is idle and intelligent may never feel 
any ill effects from his indolence at school, while 
another, less well endowed, may find that it has 
paralyzed his springs of activity forever. 

But what, above everything else, discredits in our 
eyes the discipline of natural reaction when it is 
elevated into an exclusive system, is that it makes 
no appeal to a moral sense. As M. Gerard, who has 
treated this subject in a masterly way, has pointed 
out: " Supposing that a child has a hand nimble 
enough to escape the reactive effect of an imprudent 
action, a mind sufficiently quick to evade the con- 
sequences of a mistake, he escapes. . . . The ques- 
tion in that case is not that of acting rightly, but 
of being clever and successful." In a mode of dis- 
cipline, therefore, under which the child need only 



104 HERBERT SPENCER 

to consider the material consequences of his actions, 
his sole aim may be to secure himself from these, a 
course which, with a little contrivance, need not be 
impossible. It will appear lawful to him to lie if 
he can dissimulate his untruth; to thieve, if his 
larceny will remain undiscovered. The net of 
natural justice is not woven so close that a clever 
wrong-doer cannot hope to escape through its meshes 
without loss, and unpunished. If, then, the dis- 
cipline of natural reactions had all the virtues attrib- 
uted to it by its inventor, there would yet remain 
this irremediable defect that even if it punishes the 
fault, it does not moralize the offender. It is empty 
of a moral concept. It places the child in the pres- 
ence of physical wrong only. It reminds one of 
those penitentiary systems which chastise the crime, 
but do not amend the criminal. How can one hope 
that the sole memory of the pain inflicted by Nature 
will have the power to hinder the man or child from 
falling back into his error? Does the tipsy man 
remember his headache the day after a drunken 
bout; is that a big enough counterweight to the 
attractions and pleasure held out to him by a new 
visit to the public-house ? 

To sum up, the discipline of natural reactions is, 
in many ways, insufficient and hazardous; at times 
it is unjust and brutal. Does that signify that it 



HERBERT SPENCER 105 

has no advantages, and that we must put it abso- 
lutely on one side ? No ; it may be a useful element 
in discipline, but on condition that it is made com- 
plete : in the first place, by means of rewards, — of 
these Mr. Spencer says nothing, — then, and above 
all else, by an appeal to the affections of the child, 
and to his moral sentiments, for only his conscience 
can inflict punishments which are really salutary, 
remorse and repentance. The discipline of results 
has this merit, that it is in no way capricious like 
the too often inconsistent discipline of human device, 
a discipline of commands and counter-commands. 
It never threatens in vain ; its control is mute and 
inexorable. In consequence, it does not confuse the 
child by a number of contradictory prescriptions. 
Lastly, as it never puts the child's will in conflict 
with that of its parents, it can avoid one of the dan- 
gers accompanying education in general : that of irri- 
tating children against their parents, who, through 
constant threats and scolding, finally end by mak- 
ing themselves detested. But, two things should be 
noted. In the first place, Mr. Spencer is himself 
obliged to have recourse to parents to aid Nature in 
punishing the child, and this intervention suffices to 
bring back the very danger which we were anxious 
to avoid. And secondly, Mr. Spencer is obliged to 
put Nature aside, and himself make room in his 



106 HERBERT SPENCER 

system for paternal approval and disapproval, and 
admit these also as natural reactions. In finely 
delineated word-pictures he shows us a son saddened 
because his father receives him coldly, a girl wretched 
because she fears that she has lost her mother's 
friendship. Here we are back again in realities. 
Only we may be allowed to question whether a child, 
educated according to Mr. Spencer's method, would 
be inclined to trouble himself about his parents' 
dissatisfaction. That he must suffer when he burns 
himself, that lies in the nature of things, since his 
flesh is naturally sensitive to pain; but for him to 
be affected by the reproaches of his parents, he must 
have learnt to love them, — he must have a heart, and 
Mr. Spencer seems to have forgotten to give him 
one. What moral sensibility can we expect from 
a poor little being left, without defence, without 
protection, to the severities of Nature, with no one 
to console it in its sufferings, to speak to it a word of 
affection or pity? May we not fear that such a 
pupil of Nature, one who has never felt in infancy 
the sweet influences of a parent's tenderness and 
solicitude, will be cold and unmoved by expressions 
of their displeasure? 



VI 

It is time to draw to a conclusion, not that we 
may insist on omissions and errors, — these are only 
too clear in the essay on Education; what work, 
even that of a genius, is without blemishes ? — but 
rather to state briefly its essential merits. 

Omissions and errors have been pointed out in 
passing; some others should yet be mentioned. 
First, it would seem that Mr. Spencer, like Locke, 
had in mind the education of a "gentleman," of a 
boy able to consecrate to study the long years of his 
youth. He constructed a uniform course for all, 
not taking into account different grades of instruc- 
tion. Popular education is not directly contem- 
plated ; for, in the present state of society, it would 
be chimerical to propose for a child of the poorer 
classes, obliged by the necessities of life to earn his 
bread early, such a wide course of studies, and of 
preparation for "complete living." Moreover, this 
kind of aristocratic education, like Rousseau's 
scheme, may be suitable for individual education 
conducted at home, but not for collective education 
conducted in common ; for the discipline of natural re- 

107 



108 HERBERT SPENCER 

actions would be plainly inapplicable in a school. . . . 
But without further critical arguments, let us ac- 
knowledge the chief error: in a work claiming to 
be new, there is a certain lack of originality, which 
is concealed by a brilliant style and a lively imagina- 
tion in details. Mr. Spencer is a clever stage man- 
ager. Thanks to an amazing gift of expression, he 
clothes the ideas of others magnificently; but as to 
education it is possibly just to say that the book 
contains very few really new ideas. . . . 

Yet we cannot but admire these brilliant pages, 
where a profound and humorous thinker has defined 
with extraordinary distinctness, and animated by 
a breath of intense life, some of the fundamental 
principles of the new education. If he restates 
theories known before, it is in order to develop them 
broadly and forcibly; also, it is to give to them a 
personal accent, the full warmth of his philosophic 
faith, a spirit of liberty, a sentiment of sweetness 
and humanity, and, finally, what may surprise us, a 
very noble religious tone. 

No one has stronger claim to the title of scientific 
and philosophic educationist. Although Mr. Spencer 
appears to us to be aiming towards professional forms 
of education, he is not a man of science in any special 
or narrow sense. He looks eagerly towards an in- 
clusive science, that is to say, to a philosophy that 



HERBERT SPENCER 109 

is "unified science." Whatever we may think of 
the soundness of his hypotheses, we cannot deny 
their grandeur. He aimed at putting into our hands 
one of Ariadne's threads to guide our steps through 
the labyrinth of this universe. In the name of this 
wide and noble philosophy he invites us to a higher 
and more modern conception of education. True 
education, he might say, can be given only by phi- 
losophers. How he lifts us above the routine and 
the paltry studies which tradition has perpetuated 
in certain spheres of instruction ! With what eager- 
ness he shakes off worn-out customs and prejudices ! 
How roundly he scolds masters and parents who 
would blush and think themselves slandered if 
they were accused of not knowing the legendary 
exploits of some fabulous demigod, and yet who 
avow without embarrassment that they know noth- 
ing of the structure of the human body, or about 
breathing and digestion ; who teach to their children 
the history of the tribes of Israel, and neglect to 
teach them either the laws of the physical world or 
the principles of social organization. Under the 
banner of Spencerian pedagogy will be henceforth 
enlisted the people who prefer, at the risk of mis- 
application, the substantial nourishment of science 
to the trivialities and elegancies of verbal instruc- 
tion; who would open the mind to the real world, 



110 HERBERT SPENCER 

who wish to form positive and practical men, asso- 
ciated, nevertheless, by the general knowledge they 
possess to the universal life of Nature and of human 
societies. Likewise, we must reckon amongst Mr. 
Spencer's disciples all those who, after having ac- 
cepted philosophy as the supreme end of education, 
recommend it also as means, — all who think that 
good educators must be good psychologists, and 
that psychology decides the best methods, those 
which require the best workmen. We must not 
forget that, unlike Auguste Comte, Mr. Spencer 
gives psychology a place in his catalogue of the 
sciences. Like Locke, like J. S. Mill, like Bain, he 
belongs to that English school of philosophers who 
have done more to assure a good development to 
pedagogical theory in England than has been done 
in any other country, by ascending to its source, 
that is to say, to psychological studies. "The 
sceptre of psychology/' said J. S. Mill, "has now 
returned to England;" and Th. Ribot added, "It 
might be maintained that it never left England." 
The scientific spirit united with the philosophic 
spirit calls for the spirit of freedom. Mr. Spencer 
is a great liberal and a determined individualist. 
Socialists have quite wrongly claimed to enroll him 
in their ranks. It would have been a very fortunate 
thing for them to have been able to recommend 



HERBERT SPENCER 111 

their theories by the great intellectual authority 
of the most learned of English sociologists. The 
unfortunate thing is that this so-called socialist 
inclines towards a somewhat extreme individualism. 
So far from being an adherent of a doctrine which 
tends to put humanity under the yoke of a new 
despotism, he aspires to a government of absolute 
liberty. Government, in his opinion, is an evil 
which is necessary at present, but an evil which is 
diminishing with the progress of reason. The moral 
law is the law of freedom amongst equals. "A day 
will come when every man will know how to unite 
in his heart an active love of freedom for himself 
with an active, sympathetic feeling for the freedom 
of others. Then the limitations of individuality 
which still exist, whether caused by legal fetters or 
by private force, will be finally overthrown ; no one 
will be any longer hindered in the development of 
his individuality, for each, in maintaining his own 
rights, will respect the rights of others." It would 
be difficult to find in these prophecies regarding 
society the least trace of satisfaction with the Utopias 
of collectivists. For the rest, Mr. Spencer has also 
clearly explained himself. After describing the 
miserable condition of certain tribes who have made 
an attempt at communism, — the Redskins of the 
Hudson and some backward tribes of Eastern 



112 HERBERT SPENCER 

Europe, — he draws the conclusion that "the doc- 
trine of socialism, which is absurd from the point 
of view of psychology, would be wicked from the 
biological point of view"; it would bring with it a 
rapid decadence and dissolution of the social groups, 
who were captivated by the notion of putting it 
into practice. 

Freedom, the end of social progress, — for the 
ideal government would combine the least authority 
with the greatest amount of liberty, — freedom is 
acquired only by a long effort of Nature. "It is 
the reward of constant vigilance.' ' It must be de- 
veloped in the scholar as well as in the adult in so 
far as this is possible, and respected in a woman as 
much as in a man. In the delicate question of the 
equality of the sexes, Mr. Spencer is in theory some- 
what hostile to the claims of women. He, in fact, 
declares that, setting aside exceptional cases, the 
average intellectual force, like the average physical 
force, is lower in women than the corresponding 
average in men. But in practice he shows himself 
more favourable. "Equity," he says, "demands 
that we do nothing that will put women at a dis- 
advantage." We must grant to them the same 
freedom as to men. No restriction should be put 
upon their choice of a profession. The only thing 
that should be refused them is participation in 



HERBERT SPENCER 113 

political rights. For this Mr. Spencer gives an in- 
teresting reason, that on the day when women are 
eligible as electors like men, not being subject to 
the same burdens, — for instance, to the obligation 
of military service, — they will be placed in a posi- 
tion, not of equality, but of superiority; and he 
finally refers the solution of the question to an epoch 
that, alas, is very far in the distance, when the 
military spirit will have died away, and universal ] 
peace will have been finally established. 

According to these principles, education, like the 
social life for which it prepares, should be a move- 
ment towards freedom; and, in consequence, it 
should be guided by gentleness and kindness. 
Doubtless Mr. Spencer might be reproached for the 
inhuman hardness of some of his conclusions. In 
his Introduction to Social Science, and in his book, 
The Individual against the State, he renewed certain 
of Plato's cruel theories by excluding from his Re- 
public defective men. He abandons the infirm and 
diseased to their unhappy fate, letting no one assist 
or relieve them. He reckons acts of sentimental 
philanthropy amongst what he calls "the sins of 
the law-maker." To feed the incapables at the 
expense of the capables (he said), this is to accu- 
mulate a reserve of misery for posterity. Here the 
evolutionist speaks, — the machine of progress must 



114 HERBERT SPENCER 

go forward at express rate at the risk of crushing 
beneath its wheels all who stand in its way. But 
to those whom he admits into his city, Mr. Spencer 
is, on the contrary, kind and good. He has himself 
said of his moral system that "it unites gentleness 
with inexorableness." 

As he upholds an education that is attractive, he 
advocates a morality not less pleasing. Asceticism 
inspires him with antipathy. He has nothing but 
disdain for those severe moralists who have compro- 
mised the success of their precepts by expressing 
them in forms which excite only " repulsion." What 
a delightful lesson on family discipline he gives in 
this passage from the Preface to his Data of Ethics. 

If a father, sternly enforcing numerous commands, 
some needful and some needless, adds to his severe 
control a behaviour wholly unsympathetic; if his 
children have to take their pleasures by stealth, 
or, when timidly looking up from their play, ever 
meet a cold glance, or more frequently a frown, his 
government will inevitably be disliked, if not hated, 
and the aim will be to evade it as much as possible. 
Contrariwise, a father who, equally firm in main- 
taining restraints needful for the well-being of his 
children or the well-being of other persons, not only 
avoids needless restraints, but, giving his sanction 
to all legitimate gratifications, and providing the 



HERBERT SPENCER 115 

means for them, looks on at their gambols with an 
approving smile, can scarcely fail to gain an influ- 
ence which, no less efficient for the time being, will 
also be permanently efficient. The controls of two 
such fathers symbolize the controls of morality as 
it is and morality as it should be. 

Mr. Spencer, like Rousseau and Michelet, would 
have children happy and education a delightful task. 
He has contributed to restore pleasure to the school 
as well as to life. He considers that pleasant sen- 
sations raise the level of existence, that suffering 
lowers it. He eliminates, as far as possible, oppres- 
sive restrictions and restraints that sadden, or 
commands that exact painful efforts from children 
and superhuman renunciation on the part of their 
parents. On the contrary, he appeals to the activi- 
ties, to initiative, to personal will, to all that emanci- 
pates, and to all that gives joy. 

This is the will of Nature, not the blind Nature 
of the Epicureans, which lets things move according 
to chance, but of Nature benevolent and orderly. 
Humanity, like the universe, has its aim, and it 
pursues this aim ceaselessly, through vicissitudes 
and fluctuations, periods of arrest and of recoil 
which delay progress, but which do not jeopardize 
its final success. And if Nature is kindly and sys- 
tematic, it would seem that this must be by the will 



116 HERBERT SPENCER 

of the unknown mysterious power to which it is 
obedient. Although Mr. Spencer removes Provi- 
dence, the Supreme Being, afar off into the regions 
of the unknowable, he invokes its power at each 
moment, without, for the rest, explaining how he 
conceives it to be exerted. He would say that 
all discipline belonging to human institutions is 
bad, and will fail when separated from the natu- 
ral discipline divinely ordained. He protests that 
science in its boldest conclusions is in no way irre- 
ligious or impious. Science is hostile to the super- 
stitions which dress themselves in the name of 
religion, but it is not the enemy of the essential re- 
ligious spirit which the religions hide and disfigure. 
Science is " proud" in the presence of traditions and 
legends; but it is " humble" before the impenetra- 
ble veil which hides the Absolute from the eyes of 
mankind. 

Religious expressions abound in the writings of 
the evolutionist philosopher. He criticises severely 
scholars who are interested in the amorous intrigues 
of Mary, Queen of Scots, or who comment learnedly 
on Greek odes, but who disdain the knowledge of 
the structure of the skies, and who give not a glance 
at "the great epic poem written by the finger of 
God on the strata of the globe." He even goes so 
far as to claim that the scientist alone is the really 



HERBERT SPENCER 117 

religious man. Only the sincere man of science 
can truly know how utterly beyond all, — not only 
human knowledge, but human conception, is the 
Universal Power, of whom Nature and Life and 
Thought are manifestations. 

These are not empty declarations, precautions 
dictated, like those of Descartes, by prudence, pro- 
ceeding from a philosopher who is afraid of embroil- 
ing himself with spiritual or temporal powers. The 
doctrine of Evolution in the mind of Mr. Spencer, 
as in that of Darwin, does not exclude the idea of 
a Deity who, although inconceivable, does not the 
less demand recognition as a necessary hypothesis, 
seeing that human thought meets, underlying all 
things, an impenetrable mystery. It is a Deity 
who recalls the God of Aristotle, a God not known 
to a world which he knows not, but who is, never- 
theless, the final cause of the world; and towards 
Him the world is eternally aspiring, guided and 
urged on by irresistible, attractive force. 

Let us add, lastly that this mysterious Deity is 
He who inspires in man the religion of love, as 
opposed to the religion of hate. The latter is per- 
sistently taught by our masters every day of the 
week, by making children study Greek and Roman 
epics — Mr. Spencer certainly does not like the 
classics; the former is taught one day in the week, 



118 HERBERT SPENCER 

Sunday, through the reading of the New Testament. 
But this matters little, for the religion of love is 
slowly spreading and permeating men's hearts as 
civilization advances. It will in the end triumph, 
and after boundless progress it will reign on the 
earth in a golden age; then will come the end of 
all misery, the death of all hatred, eternal happiness. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Spencer, Education, Moral and Physical. First English 
edition, 1861. 

Spencer, see among other writings: Introduction to Social 
Science; chapters in Discipline on "Progress," "The Useful 
and the Beautiful," etc. ; chapters in Problems of Morals and of 
Sociology, on "Freedom and Servitude," "Americans," "Kant," 
etc. 

First Principles. 

Data of Ethics. 

The Individual vs. the State. 

R. Hebert Quick, Essays on Educational Reformers, 1868. 

W. H. Payne, Contributions to the Science of Education, New- 
York, 1886. 

Chaumeil, Manuel de pedagogie psychologique, Paris, 1885. 

M. Vessiot, De V education, Paris, 1885. 

M. Greard, Education et Instruction, t. II; L f esprit de dis- 
cipline, Paris, 1887. 

Guyau, La morale anglaise contemporaine, Paris, 1879. 

Guyatj, Education et heredite, Paris, 1889. 

Demogeot et Monttjcci, De Venseignement secondaire en 
Angleterre, Paris, 1868. 

M. Fouillee, L 'enseignement au point de vue national, Paris, 
1891. 

M. Thamin, Education et positivisme, Paris, 1892. 

M. A. Bertrand, L' enseignement integral, Paris, 1898. 

M. J. Halleux, L' evolutionnisme en morale, study of the 
philosophy of Herbert Spencer, Paris, 1901. 

119 



